


Ghost Stories On Route 66

by Nagaina



Series: Ghost Stories On Route 66 'Verse [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, And before I could restrain it it started growing a plot and chapters, And yet the Omnic Crisis still happened, CW: Horrifying Implications of Horribleness, I intended for this to be a one-shot shortfic, I may in fact be deeply in love with the Four Corners region in general and New Mexico in specific, Multi, Playing fast and loose with assorted real world mythology, Supernatural Shenanigans, Yes there will be actual ghost stories at some point, cw: mild gore, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 01:30:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 123,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10205831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate student of the Fine Arts, attending college in what he assumes to be a reasonably sedate corner of the American southwest. Jesse McCree is an occasionally leather-clad NPS ranger whose duties extend somewhat further than shooing lost tourists back onto the clearly marked hiking trails. Something weird is going on in the desert south of Santa Fe and their lives unexpectedly come together in the middle of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all the fault of:
> 
> Gunnslaughter
> 
> and
> 
> My inability to write a plotless porny one-shot shortfic to save my life. I mean, it it just started growing PLOT and CHAPTERS before I could restrain it.

The cheapass rental car’s motivator sputtered and died for the last time on some officially unnamed, only dubiously mapped road in the hills southwest of Santa Fe. Fortunately, the antigrav batteries had just enough charge left in them that the whole thing didn’t just drop onto the cracked and weathered remains of the pavement, which probably would have done enough damage to render his life a miserable morass of insurance forms and impecunious college student special pleading for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, when it did drop, once he got out and half-pushed, half-steered it to the side of the road, it promptly buried itself up to the axles in the drifted sand making up most of the verge, listing rather definitely to one side.

 

“Fuck,” Hanzo Shimada informed the universe at large and went to pop open the hood.

 

He was greeted by a malodorous cloud of steam that stank rather noticeably of vaporized coolants, accompanied by a deep and rather alarming  _ bubblebubbleticktickpTANG _ from deep inside the motivator’s mechanical workings. To his admittedly untrained ear, it sounded like the thing was about to a) explode, b) rupture all its previously air/liquid-tight fittings, c) fall completely out of the compartment, or d) all of the above. He let the hood fall shut, gently, because he emphatically did not want to do anything to encourage any of those outcomes and got out his phone to call for help.

 

He had no bars of connection. In the distance, he heard the universe laughing in a rather distinctly malicious, mocking fashion.

 

“It’s all right,” Hanzo told himself, out loud, because the sound of his own voice on this dusty, not-particularly-traveled-at-all stretch of almost-road gave him an inordinate degree of comfort as the shadow of a circling vulture fell across him. “It is  _ all right. _ It’s 3:42. If I’m not home by six, six-thirty at the absolute latest, Genji will call the state highway patrol and tell them that his idiot brother drove off into the desert that morning to draw pictures of the death of human civilization and it’s Friday and and and Genji is going to spend the next seventy-two hours deeply chemically altered, slathered in psychotropic massage oil, and twisted into some kind of semi-Tantric love pretzel in his Yoga instructor’s lap and you are going to die of exposure and dehydration if you don’t start walking  _ right now. _ I am such an idiot.”

 

The trunk contained his jacket, his backpack, a first aid kit, an emergency crank flashlight, a spare antigrav pod, a set of jumper cables, and four triangular road reflectors with onboard distress transponders that, when he tested them for charge, turned out to be as dead as the engine. He set them up, nonetheless, on the off chance that  _ something _ might come along the road that would need to see his disabled vehicle well enough to avoid hitting it. The first aid kit contained a handful of loose biotic-impregnated bandages of various sizes, some sterile saline wound wipes, a pair of nitrile gloves, and, thankfully, an emergency shock blanket. That and the flashlight went into the backpack along with the remainder of his own supplies: three sketchbooks, a set of watercolor pencils, the highish quality camera he always carried to help with shot composition references back in the studio, a spare flannel shirt, one and a half bottles of water from the eight pack he’d carried into the desert that morning, and the apple and protein bar that he’d decided to save for later when he sat down to eat lunch in the shadow of a rusted out hulk of formerly intelligent and self-directed machinery. He put the flannel on over his tee-shirt and the jacket on over both, because the sun would be down in forty-five minutes, an hour at most, and once that happened it was going to be  _ cold. _ And he, of course, did not have a single pair of gloves stashed in any of his pockets.

 

Still. Before the GPS had punked out, along with the engine, it had indicated following this road north would,  _ eventually _ , lead back to the non-dead sort of civilization. The sort that contained reasonably accessible hot showers with which to wash away sandy grit still stained ashen and venti nonfat chai lattes with which to chase away various sorts of cold and also, in theory, people way, way more responsible than his brother, whom he passive-aggressively hoped was enjoying his tetrahydrocannabinol enhanced love-nest, the rotten little bastard. 

 

After the first hour of walking, he stopped checking his phone every ten minutes to see if he had connection. Not only did he not have connection, glancing down at his screen killed his night vision, which made walking down even the middle of an untravelled stretch of highway an exercise in trying not to trip, break an ankle, or otherwise render himself incapable of moving effectively in the direction of his own rescue. The road surface hadn’t been maintained in years, possibly decades, maybe even before the Crisis, and it was zig-zagged with inches-deep cracks driven even deeper and further apart by endless cycles of freeze and thaw, parts of the roadbed lifted high enough to be a transit hazard for antigrav vehicles much less pedestrians walking in the near-total dark, others depressed in a way that suggested impact craters more than the natural erosion of time and indifference. As the last of the color bled off the western horizon, he paused long enough to give the emergency flashlight a good long cranking and found, even so, that its light was wan and dim, at best, but infinitely better than nothing, waiting for moonrise, or running his phone battery to death. After the second hour of walking, the darkness was no longer near-total, it was absolute in the way it could only be in the complete absence of all but the smallest traces of man-made light. On the one hand, it was stunning: the sky overhead was clear and cloudless, unmarred by light pollution, and the stars shone brilliantly in that velvety arch, a hundred million silvery eyes gazing benevolently down in their serene and distant celestial majesty. On the other hand, being the sole source of man-made light in the middle of the otherwise unrelieved blackness made him rather feel like he was being observed by things far less celestial and benevolent, considerably closer to the ground, and far more intent on running him to ground and gnawing the flesh off his bones. Occasionally, the flashlight imparted to him glimpses of sulfurous yellow-green eyes glittering just out of easy visibility, alarming enough in their predatory silence that only the chancy footing kept him from speeding up his stride. Not running. That would be bad. But walking with a bit more enthusiasm.

 

Sometime during the third hour, the wind picked up, scouring across the high desert floor and carrying with it hissing currents of sand and icy pellets that were neither snow nor sleet but a little bit of both. The sky clouded over, taking even the distant comfort of starlight, and he pulled out the emergency blanket and wrapped it around him to help retain some body heat. Somewhere in the middle of hour four, he pulled out his phone and, discovering himself still without connection, opened up his recording app and began dictating the please-don’t-blame-yourself message he’d been writing in his head for at least the last forty minutes so that, when his coyote-gnawed carcass was eventually found by the authorities, the hormones-and-namaste addled little dumbass he called his only family worth having would at least not feel bad about it.

 

By the time the lights wavered into view in the distance, he had officially stopped counting the hours. He had also officially stopped having any appreciable sensation in his hands, and his feet, and his legs were only making themselves known because his thighs hated him and wanted him to fall over and be eaten by coyotes so they could at least peacefully rest in the process of digestion. In fact, it took him quite some time to realize that he wasn’t hallucinating the vista before him which was, in fact, two strings of full-sized light bulbs strung between the side of the road, where they were attached to a pair of old fashioned utility poles, and from there to each side of an overhanging porch roof.

 

_ A house, _ Hanzo’s almost inexpressibly cold and weary brain realized after a long moment of staring dully, trying to make sense of what it was seeing.  _ A house with lights. Actual working lights. There are lights on both inside and outside that house. It is a house. Lights. People. A PHONE. _

 

He trudged slowly off the road and up the path -- the path which was lined in white-washed rocks and little beds of succulents which may or may not have been cared for, he couldn’t quite tell -- and from the path up the porch stairs, which extracted a price from his knees that he was sure he’d be hearing about for days, at least. Tucking the blanket under his arm in an effort to look slightly less pathetic, he raised a hand and knocked in what he hoped was a firm but non threatening manner on the heavy old unwindowed door.

 

In his mind, the response seemed to take forever: movement, footsteps, the curtains in the window next to the door moving slightly while he locked his knees and wavered slightly on his feet, tired and cold and trying not to shiver too visibly. Then: the door creaked, the light next to it came on, and he found himself gazing directly at someone’s collarbones, around the crack of a barely opened door. “Can I help you?”

 

Someone was tall -- taller than himself by a good head, eyes dark and narrowed slightly, expression not particularly welcoming. Well, he supposed he could hardly blame someone living in the middle of the desert miles from any other humans for not being particularly happy to have one turn up uninvited on his doorstep in the middle of the night. “Hello -- my apologies, I saw your lights and -- “ The ability to think in coherent sentences momentarily skittered away, laughing mockingly. “Listen, my car broke down back that way and -- “ He gestured vaguely over his shoulder in the direction he had just come, “I’ve got no connection on my cell and I was really just wondering if you could just...borrow your phone for a minute to call a tow? I’ll just be on my way then and -- “

 

“ _ That _ way.” The door opened more fully with a labored creak and Someone stepped out, glanced both ways, and then looked at him, expression going from moderately suspicious to moderately appalled between one breath in the next. “You’re from the city. Holy Hell.”

 

“How can you tell?” Hanzo asked, genuinely curious and borderline hypothermic all at once.

 

“Your student ID’s hanging out of your jacket pocket,” Someone observed perspicaciously and threw open the door. “Get in here before you freeze to death. How long have you been walking?”

 

“I...don’t know? A while.” The warmth inside enfolded him like an embrace and it was all he could do to control the urge to moan. A fire burned in an actual honest-to-gods fieldstone fireplace in one corner of the trim little sitting room and a gentle hand in the small of his back steered him toward it, and the couch sitting a safe distance back from the spark guard. 

Those same hands divested him of his backpack and the emergency blanket, both of which went on a chair nearby, pushed him down into the couch’s soft cushions and spread a far thicker and warmer blanket over him. “You’re almost blue. Stay under the blanket and warm up while I get you something to drink. And don’t close your eyes, okay? Just until I’m sure you’re -- “

 

And that was, in fact, the last thing Hanzo heard before he totally closed his eyes and drifted off into a pleasingly warm darkness.

 

*

 

Hanzo woke up suddenly and all at once. His mouth tasted like something small and innocent had crawled inside it in the night, died a slow and terrible death, and then rotted into putrescence, the results of which were coating his tongue, his cheeks, and every single one of his teeth. His head was throbbing with the sort of headache that could only be described as skullfucking, centered as it was directly behind his left eye. These things were, however, not what jarred him from an otherwise satisfyingly deep and mostly painless slumber. Rather it was the  _ smell _ , coming from somewhere quite nearby, cooking smells, outrageously wonderful cooking smells, smells that caused his stomach to roll over, remind the rest of him that the apple and protein bar had been a long time ago, and it was time to get in gear and remedy that fact more or less immediately. 

 

He cautiously opened the eye that didn’t feel like it was being stabbed by a red-hot spiked dildo of agony and found himself looking up at a gently arched ceiling, dark open wood ribs and whitewashed plaster, a darkened chandelier light fixture hanging almost directly overhead. The light leaking in through the still mostly-drawn curtains didn’t punish his head more than it had to, and so he opened the other eye, as well, rubbing the involuntary tearing away with the back of his hand. A fire still burned low in the fieldstone fireplace -- a  _ kiva _ , his brain supplied the information, organically rounded all the way up the wall and through, sculpted with a pair of little niches higher on the flue, a mantle over top and a spark guard high enough off the floor to function as a seat on its own, covered in a gorgeously colorful geometric mosaic. One niche had a tiny pot in it containing an equally tiny flowering cactus; the other a polished wooden sculpture of a horse rearing on its hind legs. Most of the furniture was honest-to-gods old, dark wood not the new-synthetic-realistically-aged stuff, he could smell it, spicy and rich as the lingering tang of the woodsmoke, covered in cushions upholstered in the sort of patterns he’d become intimately familiar with during his Native Textile Arts of the Desert Southwest elective two semesters ago. The area rug right under the little coffee table, too, upon which sat a clear glass pitcher containing a substance too vividly red-orange to be natural, an empty glass, two small white tablets and three large tan ones, and a note that read  _ drink two glasses when you wake up and take the meds, you’re going to need them. _

 

Moving slowly, oh so slowly, slow as a slow-ass thing to avoid aggravating his body more than he had to, Hanzo sat up and slid his legs over the side of the couch. His legs, which were no longer clad in his own jeans but rather a pair of dark olive greenish sweatpants. A small part of his brain thought he should be loudly and extravagantly upset by this development; a substantially larger part was loudly and extravagantly grateful that he hadn’t slept in a pair of pants that he’d spent all day hiking across the desert, and then walking for an unknown length of time up a deserted road, in. The socks also felt comfortably soft and clean and new rather than caked in sweat and sand. So did the tee-shirt, which he noted was a pale tan with a somewhat darker patch in the shape of a roughly shaped arrowhead, point down, washed almost completely away on the left. Hanzo decided that he owed his rescuer something loud and extravagant, though he wasn’t quite sure what just yet.

 

The unnaturally vivid beverage tasted like what would happen if a citrus fruit fucked a salt lick and the resulting offspring were subsequently captured and juiced for their vital fluids. It was simultaneously repellent and delicious and he gulped down three glasses of it before he remembered he had medicine yet to take. The pills turned out to be a pair of regular aspirin and probably some kind of vitamins and by the time he got them all down someone somewhere quite close by had begun whistling and the delicious-food-cooking smells had reached the scent equivalent of a crescendo and Hanzo’s stomach made a long, embarrassingly loud noise of dismay over the fact that he wasn’t yet eating. One that apparently carried because the whistling suddenly stopped and an unseen voice, vaguely familiar, asked, “Mr. Shimada? Are you awake?”

 

Firmly throttling his shame, Hanzo cleared his throat. “Yes -- I just woke up a few minutes ago.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how his rescuer new his name but then he saw his wallet, his Santa Fe University of Art and Design student ID on its brick red lanyard, and the keys to the goddamned POS rental car that was the author of all his most recent woes sitting on the coffee table and solved the mystery for himself. “Give me a second and I’ll -- “ 

 

He heaved himself to his feet -- or, rather, he  _ attempted _ to heave himself to his feet and, in that instant, every muscle in his legs and lower back registered their displeasure with his continued existence immediately and simultaneously and it was all he could do not to crash directly into the table as he fell. “....ow.”

 

“Oh no.” Footsteps rapidly approached from somewhere beyond the back of the couch. “Easy there, sugar. Let me help you up.”

 

A pair of warm, strong hands came to rest on him and, in relatively short order, they got him warmly and strongly relocated back off the floor and into a reasonably comfortable sitting position on the couch in a nest of colorfully patterned wool blankets. Hanzo found himself looking upon his rescuer for the first time in decent lighting and for a moment any and all coherent thoughts fled his head because he looked like what would happen if the Marlboro Man had sex with a male romance novel cover model who subsequently gave birth to the Platonic ideal of ruggedly handsome, all shaggy brown hair and sunkissed dark skin and eyes only a shade or two off true black and a slow spreading smile surrounded by a beard that clearly had some attention paid to it in the name of manscaping because otherwise Romance Novel Cover Dad would have disowned him. Hanzo knew people who’d commit a number of serious criminal acts just to look at those cheekbones and that jawline, much less possess them so effortlessly and he was staring. He was completely staring. Hopefully he wasn’t drooling and staring, because that would be the actual and entire end of his existence, and all of his rescuer’s efforts would be for naught as he ran off into the desert to bury his shame. A voice that sounded suspiciously like his mother’s was screaming in the back of his mind about  _ manners, manners, what was wrong with him _ and another, that sounded even more suspiciously like Genji, was offering tips and tricks on how to recover this situation and turn it into the world’s smoothest not-damsel-in-only-mild-to-moderate-distress pass but he’d have to open his mouth  _ right now. _

 

“Hello,” Hanzo croaked. “Er. I’m sorry. Thank you?”

 

“No apologies necessary,” The offspring of gorgeous manly perfection replied, flashing an easy, and apparently quite sincere, smile. “And it’s no trouble at all. How’re you feeling?” He flicked a glance at the mostly-empty pitcher. “I’ll get you more to drink, and somethin’ to eat, in just a second. But first I need to ask you a few questions, all right?”

 

Hanzo nodded wordlessly. 

 

“What’s your name, darlin’?” Warm and gentle and kind, with the sort of charmingly encouraging smile that got people suffering from shock to come around much more slowly just so he’d keep providing it.

 

For an instant, Hanzo could not actually remember his own name. “Ah -- Hanzo. Hanzo Shimada.”

 

“Hanzo. That’s a pretty name. Unusual.” More of that gentle, encouraging smile. “Where do you come from, Hanzo?”

 

“Hanamura. Japan.” It took him far, far longer than it should have to remember that and he chose to blame some combination of lingering fatigue and skullcracking headache pain for that. “I’m attending college in Santa Fe right now and I’m planning to permanently immigrate at some point in the future.”

 

“Why Santa Fe?” He sounded genuinely curious.

 

“Because it’s as far as I could get from Hanamura while still residing on the same planet.” Hanzo replied, honestly. “And my school also gave me a pretty sweet scholarship.”

 

“Understandable.” The gently encouraging smile slid into a more sternly serious expression and Hanzo’s heart began fluttering around inside his chest in a way that suggested some sort of tragic cardiac event was about to unfold. “So am I safe in assuming that pretty tattoo of yours is not actually an indicator of the sort of gang involvement that’d require me to call the Santa Fe police and the Department of Homeland Security border enforcement office?”

 

Hanzo’s heart stopped fluttering around. In fact, his heart pretty much stopped, and it was all he could do to open and close his mouth wordlessly for what felt like forever but was probably only a small slice of forever. “No,” he finally managed to get out, as his rescuer’s eyebrows began inclining slightly. “It’s not.”

 

His rescuer regarded him steadily for a moment, as he fought with the urge to try and sink through the cushions of the couch and possibly through the floor and hopefully to the center of the Earth, where his lack of long sleeved concealment options would be hidden forever. Then he smiled again, quick and bright, and stood up, and for the first time Hanzo noticed he was also wearing a tannish tee-shirt with an arrow over his heart, only his wasn’t washed mostly away and contained a pine tree, a snow-covered mountain, a white buffalo, and the words  _ National Park Service _ , also in white.

 

“You’re a ranger?” Hanzo asked -- which, of course, explained a lot, explained pretty much everything, up to and including living in the middle of nowhere and looking like the anthropomorphic personification of rugged masculinity and being willing to rescue randomly occurring strangers in the night. It was his  _ job. _

 

“Jesse McCree, ranger-in-residence of Cerrillos National Monument, technically legal population one, three if you count the old hippie couple that lives on the other side of town, seven if you count their dogs.” He offered his hand and his grip was as impossibly strong and perfect as the rest of him. “Let me get you a plate and then we can talk about how you came to be here and see what we can do about it.”

 

*

 

The plate turned out to be more of a platter, heavy glazed earthenware loaded down with scrambled eggs mixed with bits of loose sausage, queso blanco, and salsa that had never seen the inside of a jar, a side of hashbrowns, and freshly baked biscuits, honey and butter on the side. Hanzo inhaled it all almost without bothering to chew, to his host/rescuer’s completely evident amusement, and he was provided with seconds and a giant mug of coffee without comment but with a crinkles-at-the-corners-of-the-eyes inducing smile that made his heart start fluttering around in his chest again. This time, he took the obviously gods-sent opportunity to savor the perfect fluffy-yet-creamy texture of the eggs, the tang of the cheese mixed with the salsa, the expertly seasoned potatoes, and the beverage strong enough to chase the last, lingering traces of exhaustion out of his body. 

 

“Thank you. That was delicious.” Hanzo said, scrubbing the last traces of cheese-salsa-eggs off his plate with the remaining half a biscuit still in the bread basket and consuming it in two bites.

 

“You’re entirely welcome. Nana McCree’s recipe cards haven’t let me down yet.” Ranger McCree started gathering the plates and, seeing an opportunity to begin repaying his hospitality, Hanzo assisted, despite the complaints of his legs and back, neither of which seemed particularly inclined to straighten out or work properly without an argument.

 

The kitchen continued the arched open beam ceiling/hardwood floor with geometric patterned area rugs theme as the sitting/living/dining room, the walls painted a cheerful dark yellow and the bit above the sink lined in windows, sills covered in planters growing what looked like fresh herbs. Looking out as he deposited his armload of dishes on the counter, he could see that there was, indeed, a well-maintained garden of succulents, cacti,  and tiny, wind-tortured junipers ringing the house in raised beds of whitewashed stone. Leaning there, he was also poignantly aware of how good the sunlight slanting through those windows felt on the abused and pathetically whining muscles of his back.

 

“Could I make a suggestion?” Ranger McCree set his armful down, as well, and sunlight brought the red highlights out in his otherwise brown hair and there was the staring and the hopefully not drooling again.

 

“Sure.” Hanzo straightened up and all the bones in his lumbar spine audibly cracked.

 

“Bathroom’s thataway,” The ranger hiked his thumb in the direction of a doorless arch on the far end of the kitchen. “First door on the left. Towels are in the closet right inside. A hot shower’ll sort you out better than anything short of a full body massage. I’m also going to suggest you keep those sweats for now because the NWS forecast called for today to be  _ brisk _ which is a polite saying colder than a witch’s tit plus windy out here. And your clothes are still in the dryer.” He flashed the world’s most winning grin. “I’ll go get the truck ready and then we’ll go see what we can do about your car. Deal?”

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Hanzo objected, more reflexively than anything else, iron cradle training in Manners exerting itself despite the screeching objections of his aesthetic brain, which wanted to spend as much time as possible testing his ability to consciously halt the function of his salivary glands. “I’ve already imposed on you -- “

 

“Not really an imposition, t’be honest.” The ranger’s grin took on a hint of rue around the edges and that was somehow  _ even more winning _ and this whole situation was absolutely unfair. “We don’t get very many visitors out this way -- hence the lone resident ranger -- and those that do are generally just passing through. Company’s been nice. Also: it’s a genuine pain in the ass to get a tow truck out here, so if it’s something we can finesse a bit until you get out to the main highway, I’ll be happy to do it. Otherwise, you might be stranded here again overnight.”

 

He did not, in fact, sound as though he considered that the worst possible outcome even as he offered to help avoid it. Hanzo’s heart did that little flip-flutter maneuver that he should really have checked out by a cardiologist when he got back to civilization. “Thank you. That would be wonderful -- I’ve never really been this far out of the Santa Fe Metro Axis before and, uhm, is there any way I can recover that statement without sounding like a complete idiot?”

 

“No need.” The grin relaxed into another eye-crinkling smile. “No shame in trying something new  _ or _ asking for help when you need it, Mr. Shimada.”

 

_ Doomed. I am so doomed. This is the knell of doom, and it is sounding for me.  _ “Okay, then, I’ll just,” Hanzo gestured vaguely in the direction of the bathroom, “get cleaned up.”

 

“Take your time. If I’m not back by the time you’re finished, I’ll be right across the street -- that’s the actual park office over there -- and I’ll leave the door unlocked.” The ranger made an abortive gesture that looked to all the world like he was going to tip a hat that wasn’t actually there and turned it halfway through into a kindly little shooing motion.

 

“Okay!” Hanzo did not squeak primarily because Shimadas did not, as an iron-clad rule of reality, squeak and he absolutely did not retreat down the hallway to the bathroom for exactly the same reason. 

 

He was, however, completely in danger of hyperventilating as he planted his back against the bathroom door and sent a silent prayer to a thousand generations of his ancestors for their intercession in the cause of not making more of an idiot of himself than he already had.  _ Genji _ would have known what to say -- Genji would have  _ more than one _ smoothly charming thing to say -- and how the Hell had Genji managed to inherit  _ all _ the tall and handsome and desirable and charismatic genes, anyway? It was deeply unfair. Hanzo breathed in peace and breathed out stress as he stripped out of his borrowed clothing, folding it neatly and piling it on the counter next to the sink, and just barely managed to restrain a howl of despair at the sight that greeted him in the mirror. His hair had, at some point during his interminable trek across the desert, been molested by noneuclidian entities from beyond reality and was now plastered to his skull in spikes and whorls held in place by hardened inhuman bodily secretions. Or possibly drool. Definitely drool. Every bit of skin that had been exposed to the wind was chapped red by the contact, so in addition to looking like the victim of an alien hair abduction, he could probably also pass for the local drunk after a three-day mescaline and tequila bender.

 

Shimadas also did not whimper, and so that sound did not emerge from his throat as he turned away from his reflection to fetch a towel from the closet. As he waited for the shower to warm, he comforted himself with the knowledge that at least he was in good hands -- the ranger didn’t strike him as the sort of freak who’d drive the Bride of the Spit Monster out into the desert for anything but reasons of pure humanitarian aid-rendering and thus his virtue was at least safe even if his dignity had already been summarily beaten to death before he was even awake enough to defend it. If he indulged in a moment of pure death-of-all-hope-related despair under the comforting warmth of the spray, there was at least no one there to witness it. And the water did do a perfectly excellent job of loosening up his muscles enough to tolerate a few gentle stretches in the generously-sized shower stall, which helped loosen things up even more. The toiletries weren’t brand name -- or, at least, not any brand he recognized, the sticker on the shampoo bottle was worn to illegibility -- but they smelled and felt wonderful on his hair and skin. The shampoo had a cedary, spicy note to it that made him want to breathe deeply just to get more of it into his head and the soap, a variegated block of color, made the chapped skin of his face tingle in a way that suggested healing immediately underway instead of the multitude of horrible alternatives, a definite mood-improver as far as he was concerned. All told, he felt a solid sixty percent more human after the shower which was, he supposed, probably at least as much the point of that suggestion as limbering up.

 

The skin on his face  _ did _ look a good deal less red and horrific than it had before the wash and his hair was at least willing to obey the commands of a comb. The ranger had not, in fact, returned yet as he padded back down the hall in stocking feet and found his hiking boots and his bag next to the door and a spare hair tie in one of the side pockets along with a half-empty package of spearmint gum, a piece of which he used in lieu of borrowing his host’s toothbrush, which was a bridge way, way too far. His jacket hung on the peg rack next to the ranger’s heavy winter parka and a vividly red-and-gold garment that looked for all the world like a cloak. Hanzo ran his hands over it and found it a soft, warm wool, the scent that rose from it the same cedary-sagey-spicy as the shampoo, the geometric pattern around the edge similar to but subtly different from the border of the blanket folded over the back of the couch. He thought of the ranger’s golden-brown skin and dark eyes and wondered as he pulled on his boots and his jacket and stepped outside into the cool of the bright morning.

 

Cold with the wind, as promised, but the park office was directly across the street -- unpaved, rutted dirt and gravel, a startling contrast to both the lovely well-maintained house at his back and the modernish building at his front,  a low one-story confection of glass and adobe with a fully solar roof and a wraparound verandah that resembled the sort of thing you’d see on a saloon in a western. The door chimed gently as he entered and found himself standing in something part souvenir shop/part mini-museum, the walls lined in locked glass cases of artifacts (“Cerrillos and Its Place On the Turquoise Trail,” “El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro -- Historical Trade Routes of the Old Southwest,” “Native American Tribes of the Four Corners Region”) and the middle filled with racks of touristy tchotchkes in bins, t-shirts in dozens of sizes and colors, and, to his surprise, an extremely respectable collection of academic-grade books on local history, culture, and art, some of which he didn’t yet own, along with the usual ghost-towns-and-Native-American-folklore suspects. He was paging through one when the door chimed again and the ranger ducked inside, holding down his hat, his honest-to-gods  _ cowboy hat _ , it was a fucking Stetson if it was anything, and Hanzo had to physically resist the urge to swoon. 

 

“Wind is definitely picking up,” Ranger McDreamy greeted him, sounding a little breathless himself. “I’ve got the truck gassed and good to go, so whenever you’re ready Mr. Shimada…”

 

“Hanzo,” Hanzo heard himself saying in something approximating a natural, non-squeaky tone of voice -- not a  _ suave _ tone,  _ per se _ , but at least not a traumatically prepubescent peep, which was a definite improvement on recent events. “Please. Call me Hanzo, Ranger McCree.”

 

“Hanzo,” Ranger McDoMeRightHereandNow replied, and the way his tongue caressed the syllables turned Hanzo’s knees to a particularly bendy variety of gelatin and he leaned mock-casually against the bookcase in an effort to avoid melting to the floor in a babbling puddle of squee. “Then you’ve got to call me Jesse. I insist.”

 

“Jesse.” That was a  _ little _ squeakier, but not much, so Hanzo was inclined to call it a win. “Shall we?”

 

“We shall.” The ranger opened the door and held it for him with a flourish.

 

The garage was tucked away well out of sight behind the park office and the row of older buildings alongside -- original town buildings he recognized from the artifact photos, older and more weathered and showing clear signs of preservation effort -- a squat cinderblock structure, one of its front doors already rolled open. The truck was equally squat and blocky with a fully enclosed cargo compartment in back and sat on real rubber wheels rather than antigrav pods, painted white with a vivid green stripe down the side bearing the words PARK RANGER with the NPS shield on both doors.

 

“Does this thing  _ actually run _ on gas?” Hanzo asked as he climbed inside and got a look at the gauges on the dashboard. “How  _ old _ is it?”

 

“Older’n both of us.” Ranger McImplishSmile replied and turned the key in the ignition, the engine coming to life with a behemoth roar of internal combustion. “I think it technically reached classic car status something like three years ago but keepin’ it runnin’ is sort of a necessity out here, so…” He popped it into gear and pulled out, following an unseen access road out to a junction with the not-really-a-highway Hanzo had followed into town. “How long were you walking, Hanzo?”

 

Telling him to use his given name was mistake -- a terrible, mortal error that he was going to be paying for, oh, yes, he could see that now. “Uh.” It took a moment to cudgel the information out of his brain. “At least a couple hours. Probably not as many as it felt like, because it felt like forever -- there was a little...not really snow, but it was pretty miserable there for a while.” 

 

“Yeah, the desert this late in the autumn can be deceptive temperature-wise, particularly after dark. You weren’t badly prepared, though you probably could have done with more water. And some gloves. Spare pair in the dash box, by the way.” Ranger McWarmlyHelpful pointed out to him as they hit cracked and pitted asphalt for the first time. “This is old Highway 14. How’d you come to be down this way?”

 

Hanzo pulled the gloves on and frowned, considering. “I’m not entirely sure myself. I was following my GPS -- I spent most of the day in the desert between Shiprock the ghost town and Shiprock the geological feature, taking reference photos and video, doing some color studies -- “

 

“In the Omnic boneyard?  _ That _ part of the desert?” Hanzo risked a glance and found the ranger’s face in an expression he was tempted to call Study of the Marlboro Man’s Gorgeous Son Attempting Studied Neutrality and Not Quite Making It.

 

“Yes.” Hanzo admitted. “I know it’s supposed to be off-limits but -- “

 

“But that hasn’t ever stopped anybody in the history of time.” Ranger McReassuringSmile gave him one, but there was more than a ghost of concern in his eyes. “You were sayin’?”

 

“I was following my GPS on the most direct route back to Santa Fe when the car started fritzing out -- or, rather, I asked it to give me the most direct route back, but it wasn’t following the roads I took in and it kept directing me off the main highways. I had to reboot it twice to get a good connection and by the time it started showing me the route that took me into Cerrillos, the car was sputtering like it hadn’t been sucking down sunlight all day.” They left the main road onto a well-detailed siding and, yes, that  _ was _ a fucking impact crater. “And it’s a  _ rental _ because of course it is.”

“You lost cellular connection at some point, right?” Ranger McCalmlySoothing asked, in precisely that tone. “And never got it back.”

 

“Yeah. I’m not exactly sure where -- it was spotty out near Shiprock but I still had  _ some _ bars, at least.” Hanzo checked his phone and found it still connectionless. “I  _ really _ hope Genji’s too blissed out to be worried about me right now.”

 

“Genji?” Ranger McCurious asked and Hanzo silently cursed himself because hearing that voice saying his brother’s name was the worst thing he’d done to himself for at least, oh, an hour.

 

“My brother.” Hanzo replied. “He’s studying here, too. Video game design -- the tech end. Spends most of his time hunched over a computer.”  _ My handsome, charming, sociable, insanely flexible little brother _ , he thought, but did not say, in the desperate hope that none of those details would ooze out at any point.  _ He is in no way sex incarnate with a side order of willing to try anything once, more than once if he enjoys it and nobody gets arrested. Why am I even thinking this why? _

 

“Must be nice to have a familiar face around, this far from home.” The ranger upshifted and guided them back off the siding -- they were past the length of rucked-up-by-way-more-than-natural-forces road that had given him such fits in the dark. 

 

“Yes -- yes, it is.” Hanzo admitted, after a moment, and it managed to not sound grudging. “Better than being alone the first couple years. I don’t think it’s much further -- it felt like so much longer last night.”

 

“I’ll bet. It’s so dark out here once the sun goes down, it feels like you’re walking alone in the middle of nothing, even if you’ve got a  _ good _ flashlight. Not to cast any disparagement on your flashlight.” Ranger McGoodAtChangingtheSubject grinned at him. “And I’m saying this as somebody born and raised around here.”

 

“It was nice until the clouds rolled in. So many stars. Unfortunately, I think there was also at least one coyote and thaaaaaaaat kinda freaked me out a little. Or a lot. It was a lot,” Hanzo admitted, and that got a laugh -- a gentle, husky sound completely devoid of mockery. For a moment he forgot what he was about to say because that was the most perfect sound in the world and some part of his brain immediately began working out how to make him do it again. “They’re pretty harmless, aren’t they?”

 

“For the most part, yeah, they are. Probably at least as scared of you as you were of it.” His natural default expression seemed to be a smile -- the kindly, eyes-crinkling smile he’d worn at the breakfast table. “There it is.”

 

Hanzo’s POS rental rose out of the desert in front of them and he found himself hoping that, whatever the fuck was wrong with it, it was beyond the skills of a handy park ranger capable of keeping legit antique gas-drinking vehicles functional and that they’d have to call for a tow, at least, and this pleasant time wouldn’t have to end just yet. They pulled up alongside, Hanzo fishing out his keys and the ranger retrieving a tool case from the back of the truck. The toxic chemical cloud that greeted him the evening prior had dissipated in the intervening hours, leaving only the faintest piquant ghost of itself when they opened the hood, the ranger --  _ Jesse, his name is Jesse, you can totally think his name, really you can _ \-- extracting a nameless tool of automotive diagnostics from his case and getting to work inside the engine compartment.

 

“Why  _ do _ you drive a gas-drinker, anyway?” Hanzo asked, as he checked over the vehicle to make sure there wasn’t any outstanding damage he’d missed the day before, and that he hadn’t left anything of his own in it. 

 

“Honestly?” The ranger looked up from the screen of the diagnostic pad he was tapping queries into. “Because relatively advanced modern vehicles like this one tend to have...issues...around here. Computer brains get all fried crispy. Electrical systems punk out. Antigrav up and quits without warning. GPS gets utterly lost. Such as is the case here.” He shut down the diagnostic tablet. “It’s been that way since just before the Crisis and quite a bit worse since, I’m afraid to say -- there’s not a formal exclusion zone, because that’d require the Federal government to actually admit out loud to something and I am sayin’ as a Federal employee that’s about as likely to happen as an honest politician, so we gave up on gettin’ official recognition of the situation some time ago.” He dropped the hood, the  _ bang _ of it echoing away across the low, rolling, scrub-covered hummocks, the bits of desert flat to either side of the road. “Given how misdirected you got, it was a pretty good thing you broke down as close as you did to Cerrillos -- “

 

A low, ululating howl rose over the hills from somewhere unseen and, in the instant, it seemed even colder, despite the flat wind and the high, bright sun, a chill crawling up Hanzo’s spine and directly into the places of his hind-brain where the ancestral memory of predators that  _ actually did _ eat human meat preferentially lived and wanted him to start running, right now.

 

“Hanzo, darlin’, get in the truck.” Ranger McCalmandCool suggested, politely, and Hanzo didn’t have to be told twice -- he was inside with the passenger door locked before his host had the tool case replaced in the back and the cargo compartment shut and locked.

 

A second voice answered the first, and a moment after that, a third. Ranger McTakingHisDamnSweetTime placed what looked like a portable telemetry beacon on the roof of the car, on the hood, and on the trunk, activating them as he went. Watching him do it, for the first time Hanzo realized he was armed -- really armed, with a gun holstered on each thigh, and he went about his business in a calm and thorough fashion that betrayed nothing but cool comfort and absolute confidence with that state. He laid a string of something -- beads? They were tiny whatever they were -- around the car and climbed back into the truck as the howling chorus rose to a genuine cacophony, started it, pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, upshifted and dropped the accelerator in a fashion so completely unhurried that Hanzo was almost inclined to think that he was having a personal auditory hallucination. A flicker of movement in the rearview mirror caught his eye and he glanced up only to have his chin caught in a gentle, but firm, grip.

 

“Trust me, you don’t want to do that.” Jesse informed him, catching his eyes and holding them, as well, for a precious few seconds, and the deadly seriousness he saw written there chilled him almost more than the howls. “Mostly they ain’t very active during the day but something’s got ‘em worked up. Best to keep your eyes forward for now, okay?”

 

It took a moment to convince his throat to work and, once it did, it came out husky rather than a squeak. “‘They’?”

 

“Nana McCree would’a called ‘em  _ naayéé _ \-- works as well as anything, since we don’t really know what they are.” His mouth settled into something nowhere near a smile. “It’s how I knew you were walking with a coyote last night. Otherwise, you might not have made Cerrillos at all.”

 

A howl, louder and closer than all the others, rose so close behind them that even Jesse started, jerking the wheel involuntarily, and Hanzo’s gaze flicked reflexively back to the mirror. What he saw reflected there hit him in the hindbrain like a brick made of the pure and merciful inability of the human mind to consciously correlate all its contents: he experienced, briefly, the horrible, vertiginous awareness that he was looking at something that should not exist in a sane and benevolent universe, the realization that that understanding was significantly less shocking than it should have been, and then his mind, completely out of patience with him, pulled the curtains and the world spiralled away into soothing darkness. The last thing he heard, before everything faded away, was Jesse’s voice, and the last thing he felt was Jesse’s arm, wrapped around him and pulling him close.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing he became aware of, once he realized there were things  _ to _ be aware of, was the voice. It was a beautiful voice, rich and dark and warm, and the mere act of hearing it was the sweetest comfort he’d ever known, better than laying under the  kotatsu on a cold winter evening and watching the snow fall gently over the garden in the deep blue of the twilight, better than the exquisite release of tension as he loosed an arrow on the firing range, better than finding the precise shade of color to fully express the mood he attempting to evoke in his work. It wound around him and through him, buoying up his mind and soul on arms of song, and at that moment he realized the voice  _ was _ singing, a song whose words he did not know, in a language he did not recognize, but which he understood nonetheless: it was calling him back, and he let it take him, up out of the dark-cold-nothing.

 

He became aware, next, of the solidity of his own existence, of the flesh and bone, blood and skin, that made up the body in which he lived, and of exactly how much that body hated every single thing about him and itself at that very moment. His head felt fragile, brittle, like an overbaked piece of clay sculpture fresh out of the kiln, waiting for the clumsiest intern in the Fine Arts department to come along and jostle it just hard enough to set off a chain reaction of events that would end in screaming, ambulance sirens, and intravenous sedatives administered en route to a mandatory seventy-two hour psych hold following a spontaneous attempted murder. It wasn’t quite pain so much as the  _ threat _ of pain, the suggestion that the slightest hint of movement, necessary or otherwise, would result in a physical punishment vastly at odds with the severity of the offense, and so he concluded that  _ holding still _ was likely the kindest thing he could do for himself. The rest of his body assisted by virtue of feeling as though it were carved from a single slab of lead or osmium or some other incredibly dense substance that would require genuinely heroic human efforts to heft around, thereby fully justifying his decision to behave as a basically sessile mass. Also helpful: the knowledge that something was holding him down. Well, okay, maybe not  _ holding him down _ in the sense of  _ restraining him from actually doing anything _ but someone definitely had their hands on him. Pressed to his chest, as a matter of fact -- his  _ bare _ chest, it felt like, because that was definitely some skin-on-skin warmth transfer happening, callused, long-fingered hands spread across the breadth of his pectoralis major, tips of the thumbs just touching. Someone’s weight was settled firmly astride his hips, a sensation that would have been emphatically erotic under pretty much any other circumstance but at the moment did not seem to carry that connotation and none of the relevant equipment seemed interested in picking it up.

 

Still. Someone was touching him. He supposed, in a vague and not particularly enthusiastic way, that he should be at least a little bit concerned with that. Not enough to put any effort into  _ stopping _ it, but enough to actually determine what was going on.  _ That _ seemed like a reasonable idea. Yes, yes it surely did.

 

_ This is going to suck beyond the telling of it. _ The thought articulated itself verbally from amidst the inchoate mass of hazily good intentions, sending a frisson of dread through the threadbare fabric of his being, the essence of realism making itself felt. Then, before the essence of realism could graduate to the essence of fuck no, don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself, he opened his eyes.

 

His eyelids parted with a sensation like silk tearing along a sharply folded seam. Until that moment, he would have  _ sworn _ that eyelashes did not actually contain any nerve endings; afterwards, he would never again be so certain, because at that instant each one felt as though it were an exquisitely sensitive filament of something extremely fragile that shattered into a million shards of agony as they parted. His eyes watered, uncontrollably, reducing everything to either a dark blur or a bright blur of acid-washed torment as he blinked furiously in an effort to clear them, breath catching in his throat as something, probably a shriek of some variety, tried to claw its way out of his chest. He took a deep, heaving breath and the hands on his chest lifted away, the weight astride him shifted slightly, and sound he realized he’d been hearing all along stopped. 

 

“Hanzo?” He knew that voice -- it sounded like he felt, rough and broken, as though its owner had been talking, or singing, for hours without cease. “Can you hear me?”

 

He blinked, thrice, and the blur cohered: Ranger McCree, leaning over him, painted knuckles to navel in...tattoos? It couldn’t be tattoos, he’d seen the man’s arms before, the pattern on them a thing of intricate and interlocking geometric forms, there was no way he would have overlooked it. He swallowed, hard, and found his lips and tongue and throat completely unequal to the task of making even the smallest sound.

 

“Oh, thank all the gods that ever were.” The look that crossed his face was a thing of pure and perfect relief. Hanzo could have sworn there were actual tears in his eyes. “I thought I’d lost you.”

 

_ Lost? _ Moving his jaw set off a warning throb in his temples, the promise of more to come if he wasn’t careful, and he closed his eyes, trying to force the insides of his skull and the current situation to come together in any way that made sense, to no particular avail. One of the strong, warm hands that had until recently been resting on his chest moved up to cup his face gently -- so gently he leaned into it, so warm and so comforting he would have reached up to pull him closer if he could have.

“You need to rest.  _ Really _ rest. This took a lot out of you and I’m sorry,  _ I’m so sorry _ , I never should have taken you with me.” It came out a husky rasp, almost directly against his ear, and both those hands framed his face, warm chapped lips brushed his forehead, and he wanted to ask what there was to be sorry for but already the strength he needed to do so was fading, the weight of physical and mental exhaustion pulling him down into a gray and sensationless place where no pain could reach.

 

*

 

When Hanzo finally woke up it was completely and all at once -- admittedly, not an unnatural or even unusual event, considering he was normally the first person up and out on any given day. The strange part was that, for at least the second time in recent memory, he was looking up at a completely unfamiliar ceiling: large wooden beams, carved their lengths with repeating geometric motifs, picked out against the dark wood in vivid red and gold, white and ocher, latillas of paler wood laid perpendicular between each beam. Absolutely not the ceiling in any room of the three bedroom condo he rented with his brother, his brother’s boyfriend, and his brother’s two least objectionable classmates. For a long, long moment, he stared blankly up at it, appreciating the aesthetic qualities, the way the lighter wood of the latillas gave the illusion of the ceiling being higher than it actually was, the way the carvings drew the eye the whole length of the room. Dusky, Santa Fe red walls almost bare of adornment except for a few framed photographs. Three tall, slender windows, not quite floor to ceiling, framed in rough wooden lintels carved and painted in the same patterns as the ceiling supports, exterior shutters closed. The light he was using to see came entirely from the kiva sculpted into the corner nearest where he lay, a low fire burning behind an iron mesh grate. A standing wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a single chest at the foot of the bed, the bedstead itself, all of heavy, dark, old wood. 

 

A bed. He acknowledged to himself that he was laying on a bed, which seemed...strange, for some reason. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, or why that disquieted him at some level. It wasn’t an  _ uncomfortable _ bed -- his feet weren’t hanging off the bottom, for example, and from his position in the middle of the mattress, he was in no danger of rolling off either side. Said mattress felt, to him, at least semi-firm, the pillows were several and not yet to the point of being slept flat, the blankets warm and soft and enveloping him completely -- he almost felt as though he’d been  _ tucked in. _ He shifted slightly, stretching his wonderfully pain-free spine, buried his face in a pillow and the scent that rose from it was cedar-sage-spice and a single blinding instant he remembered where he was if not how he had come to be there and all-but  _ teleported _ out of Ranger McCree’s bed.

Ranger McCree’s  _ bed. _

 

_ He was sleeping in his rescuer’s bed. _

 

A frantic look around secured the calming information that he was, in fact, alone. A well-padded chair and footstool sat between the bed and the fireplace, a rumpled blanket and a throw-pillow still providing evidence occupation, though how recently he couldn’t begin to guess. A glance down showed him still dressed in soft-washed comfortable sweats, tee-shirt, socks, so whatever had caused him to be upgraded to the full bedroom accommodations had not, apparently, involved any other upgrades or side-grades or grades that would earn him weeks of helpful suggestions from Genji about what he should have done in this situation on the chance that he made mention of this to his brother, which he absolutely would not, ever. The bedroom door was against his back and, moving slowly and with care, he worked the wrought iron latch and slid it open an inch, to peer out into the hallway. It was, in fact, the same hall that led to the bathroom and the kitchen beyond, walls painted the cheerful yellow that caught and kept the sunlight. In the kitchen, the dishes were done and sitting in the rack to dry, but the quality of the light coming through the windows had changed, reflected rather than direct, much later in the day. He drifted to the arched doorway that separated the kitchen from the room of all purpose and found his host sitting at the dining table, back to him, a map spread out in front of him pinned down at each corner with a basalt block carved in the shape of an owl, a stack of reference texts, two college ruled notebooks, and a package of pens. From the angle of his head and neck, he was examining it; from the angle of his shoulders and his spine, he was not enjoying what he was seeing. 

 

Hanzo took a breath to speak but before he could expel it, someone landed a thunderous knock on the door and a voice, deeper than the ranger’s by a whole octave and twice as raspy announced, “Garden of the Desert, special delivery!”

 

The eyeroll was clearly audible in the ranger’s voice. “It’s not locked, Gabe!”

 

“It fucking  _ should be _ !” The windowless door swung open and a mass of swirling, hissing smoke, curling shadows, flickering dark wings flowed inside, the door slamming firmly shut and all the locks lining it flicking shut behind it. Hanzo retreated a step, two, blinked, and the smoke-shadow-wings resolved into a human shape: a man, tall, broad shoulders and chest only barely disguised by the loose black jacket he wore, silver-dusted black hair and scarred dark skin and eyes that burned darkly crimson in the shadows of his hood. He was, incongruously, carrying a plastic shopping bag that he deposited on the table directly in the middle of the map; the ranger promptly moved it aside. “So distracted that you’re neglecting  _ basic _ physical security precautions, now? Does this have anything to do with the call I hear you made over to Roadie?”

 

“I am  _ wearing _ twelve reasons why anybody who tries to come through that door uninvited is going to have a genuinely bad day.” The ranger replied, tone amused. “And y’all are still too young to be this much of a gossipy old fart.”

 

“I’m going to parse that out into an overall complement, for your sake.” The newcomer -- Gabe? Gabe with the glowing red eyes? Was Gabe actually a smoke monster? Hanzo had no idea and was too paralyzed with shock and indecision to either guess or scream or retreat -- pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “Spill it, kid. You’ve got six kinds of doom written all over you.”

 

The ranger --  _ Jesse, his name is Jesse, you can think his name, it’s Jesse _ \-- scrubbed his hands over his face, shoulders dropping as he did so. “Yes, it’s got something to do with the call I made to Roadie. And the order I just made so -- “

 

“Custom blended to your precise specifications by Ana’s own hands, new tea bell inclusive. And a fresh bottle of that shampoo Jack makes that you love so much.” Gabe grinned and, for a completely horrifying instant, his mouth stretched entirely too wide and contained far, far too many sharp white teeth to be anything identifiably human. “For the record: Jamie called and asked if I’d be willing to ride shotgun so you can presume I already know about the broken-down car at the outer edge of the Red Zone. So just cut to the chase and tell me how it got there.”

 

Jesse pushed an object otherwise concealed behind the bulk of his body across the table: the dedicated shot composition camera that usually lived in the pockets of his bookbag. “Art student from the city. Per his testimony on the topic, he left Santa Fe on Friday morning for a day of inspiration-seeking among the ruins in the near vicinity of Shiprock -- both Shiprocks. While he was out there in the desert between the town and Tse Bit’a’í, he started experiencing technical issues with both his gear and his transportation. The GPS unit he was using completely freaked, dragged him somewhere around two hundred miles out into the Red Zone, and then almost back to safety before the car finally gave up and died. He walked, in the middle of the night, up from the edge and knocked on my door.”

 

“And you, of course, let him in.” Asperity thick enough to taste.

 

“He made it past the boundary maze.” Jesse replied, irritably. “Nothing purely from Beyond could get through there without -- “

 

“Without wearing enough stolen human flesh and blood and skin to pass and then come in here and tear your head off.” A hiss. “You are the  _ entire reason _ I have gray hair right now, kid.”

 

“So you keep sayin’.” Dryly. “In  _ any _ case, he did not tear my head off and, after describing the situation to me, I realized that our known zone of disruption is now  _ way _ further to the west than it was even three months ago -- “

 

“And that whoever’s supposed to be monitoring the outer ward boundary is half-assing it pretty hard because everything they’re interested in protecting is still under Tse Bit’a’í’s shadow and nobody thought to call you so you could pick up the slack.” 

 

“-- and that it might be developing some explicitly malevolent intent, because it dumped my guest almost on top of a nest of  _ naayéé _ . An unusually active during the day nest of  _ naayéé. _ Fortunately it was cold that night or he’d never have made it here otherwise.” He rested his head in his hands and, for an instant, he looked so utterly weary it was all Hanzo could do not to step into the room and try to comfort him. “And, of course, I screwed up at least once myself because when I went to check the car and see if I could  _ avoid _ calling Roadie and Jamie, I took him with -- “

 

“Wow.” There was an entire lifetime of unsurprised nonreaction in that syllable.

 

“And he got a glimpse of one. In the rearview, so it was just the reflection but -- “

 

“Buuuuuuut it was enough to make you regret not leaving him here. Where he would be safe. Safer than anyplace else for dozens of miles all around.” Hanzo realized, in that instant, that there actually was someone on Earth more lethally sarcastic than his brother and it was sharing the room with him right now. “The next time Jack’s dog has puppies, you’re getting one. Maybe more than one. As an encouragement to stop adopting human strays.”

 

“Thank you so much for your understanding. I just spent the last...what day is it…?”

 

“Tuesday.”

 

“ _ Tuesday! _ ” Hanzo shouted, shocked out of his quiescence.

“I just spent the last three days singing his soul back into his body and then stitching them together again.” Jesse jiggled the bag gently. “Which is why I’m going to need this for him when he wakes up.”

 

“Oh.” Those burning crimson eyes flicked in his direction. “Well. You might want to see to that as a priority, kid, because he’s standing over there having an out of body experience and possibly a nervous breakdown.”

 

“Wh -- “ The ranger spun in his seat and locked eyes with him in the motion -- in any other circumstance, the look of dismay that crossed his face might’ve been comical. “ _ Dammit, Gabe. _ ”

 

“I see that my work here is done.” The smog monster/second most sarcastic human on Earth rose, dropped a fatherly pat on the ranger’s shoulder, and made for the door. “Coming over for fajitas tonight? We’re making enough to feed Reinhardt, so there’ll be plenty for you. And company, if he’s of a mind.”

 

“We’ll see.” The ranger growled -- really growled, his voice was gravelly enough for it just now -- and rose from his chair, hands outspread as though showing himself unarmed, despite the weapons he still wore, approaching slowly.

 

Hanzo bumped into the sink counter and realized as he did so that he was retreating, reflexively, that he could  _ feel _ his pulse pounding in his throat,  _ feel _ the breath catching in his lungs, his field of vision trying to tunnel at the edges.  _ What he said cannot possibly be true _ , the calm voice of reason that ever and always sounded like his father murmured soothingly in the back of his mind,  _ because it is impossible. None of this is possible. You are -- _

 

“I am totally losing my mind, aren’t I?” Hanzo asked, out loud. “Something really terrible happened to me out in the desert, and you’re just waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Go ahead. You can tell me. I promise I won’t freak out.”

 

“Something really terrible did happen out in the desert but, all things bein’ equal, it wasn’t as terrible as it could have been and, no, you ain’t losin’ your mind.” Softly, gently, and moving with the sort of slow care you’d use to avoid startling a skittish, injured animal. “And freakin’ out is a perfectly reasonable response, so if you do I promise I won’t hold it against you.”

 

“Good to know.” A warm, strong hand came to rest in the small of his back and, before he could stop himself, he buried his face in the angle of Jesse’s neck and shoulder and  _ clung _ as he shivered, convulsively, unable to stop through any desire of his own. 

 

Warm, strong arms closed around him, carefully, holding him closely enough to offer comfort and support, loosely enough not to tip what was threatening to become a genuine panic attack over the edge, a pretty neat trick the still-rational part of his mind was forced to admit. The hand not anchored to the base of his spine caressed his back in long, slow strokes and came to rest in his hair as the frantic pace of his breath finally moderated itself. The not-at-all-rational part of his mind wondered what that would feel like without the impediment of clothing and that was all he needed to find the strength to step back, to bring himself back under control. Jesse, taking the cue from him, let him go.

 

“What happened to me?” Hanzo asked, catching his rescuer’s dark eyes and holding them.

 

And, to give him the credit he deserved, he didn’t look away. “The  _ naayéé _ are...not of this world. Never have been, never will be, but sometimes they find their way here, one way or another. The ones you saw the other day are particularly unpleasant to encounter because of the effect they generally have on people. They’re predators. Lazy-ass predators, actually, that mostly like it dark and mostly like it hot and they generally don’t come out in the daylight or the cold, so I really didn’t think we’d see any of them but…” He gestured helplessly. “Yeah. Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of this to happen to you, it was completely my fuckup and -- “

 

“Jesse.” Hanzo interjected, with what he felt was admirable calm. “ _ What happened to me?” _

 

“They tried to eat your soul.” Jesse replied and immediately took a step towards him and rested a comforting hand on his arm. “Yanked it out through the sympathetic connection forged by the reflection you shared for a minute but I stopped things before it could get any further than that. It just took a while to coax your body and spirit back together -- you were in a couple different kinds of shock and it took some time to convince you that I wasn’t going to hurt you, too. Which was perfectly understandable given the circumstances.”

 

“I...see.” The still-rational part of his mind was screeching in high-pitched distress; the rest, however, was finally achieving an inner state of equilibrium that permitted him to hear and process this information without falling into any further pieces. “So I am...outside my body now. As your friend said.”

 

“Yes and I apologize, again. Gabe is pretty much made entirely out of antisocial tendencies at this point in his existence.” The comforting hand came to rest in the small of his back again. “We should probably put you back.”

 

“How can you be  _ touching _ me if I’m not in my body?” Hanzo asked but nonetheless permitted himself to be guided down the now quite dark hallway.

 

“Circumstances have required me to master a number of fairly esoteric and nonstandard survival skills over the years.” Again, oh so very dryly as he opened the bedroom door. 

 

“That’s not -- oh. Oh my.”

 

His body was, in fact, still laying in the bed, chest rising and falling in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep, hair spread almost artfully across one of the pillows, the firelight casting the planes of his face in coppery light and shadow. He blinked and took a deep breath and with a sudden, vertiginous wrench his perspective shifted and he was laying on his back in pillows and blankets and staring up at a carved and painted ceiling. With a certain amount of effort -- his thoughts felt laggy, like medicine head to a degree previously unheard of by modern science, and it took some time to convince his limbs to cooperate with one another -- he managed a sitting position against the headboard. Jesse sat on the edge of the bed and poured him a glass of water from the carafe sitting on the bedside table, which he consumed in a three swallows, and a second, which he drank more slowly. 

 

His voice, when he spoke, was rusty with disuse. “It’s really Tuesday?”

 

“Tuesday afternoon. Almost evening, actually.” Jesse replied and offered another glass of water.

 

“I missed class. More than one class. I  _ never _ miss class. I’ve got a midterm paper due tomorrow and two exams next week. My brother might actually be worried about me by now.” He accepted the glass and sipped at it slowly. “Something from another world just tried to eat my soul.”

 

“It’s a lot to take in.” Ranger McTalentForUnderstatement admitted, looking anywhere but at him, Hanzo noticed and, not for the first time, regretted that he’d let Hana talk him into that particular haircut, though he couldn’t really blame her for the piercings. “If you want, I’ll drive you home tonight -- I’ve got a call in to a local mechanic with the equipment required to retrieve your car -- “

 

“Roadie?” Hanzo asked, because asking questions and receiving answers made the whole situation feel at least slightly more real.

 

“Roadhog. It’s his nickname, real name’s Mako, but he likes to say he’s wanted in too many places to go by it.” Jesse glanced at him, grinned, looked away again. “He and his partner Jamie run a salvage and rebuilding operation off the highway about twelve miles north of here. They do most of the work that keeps my little fleet of gas-drinkers functional. They can certainly get your car back and probably in working order without too much trouble, so long as Jamie knows beforehand not to make too many...alterations.”

 

“I’m not certain I could afford that.” Hanzo replied carefully. “I was supposed to have it back on Sunday and I can just imagine what kind of fees -- “

 

“Don’t worry about affordin’ it.” In the sort of tone that didn’t really brook anything in the way of argument. “Are you hungry?”

 

His stomach was knotted entirely too tight to even consider the concept of food. “Not really, no. I just...would like to go home.”

 

“Of course.” Jesse rose and offered his hand; Hanzo accepted it, because his prevailing state of awkward and uncoordinated made getting out from under the covers and to the side of the bed more of an adventure than it should have been. 

 

Getting to his feet was likewise a thing of extraordinary gracelessness and, for a horrifying moment, he felt like a newborn giraffe with legs too long and too ungainly to be real that also happened to be coming into the world on the deck of a ship about to sink into heaving, churning seas. He clung again, as the floor tried to tip sideways and knock him over, and his host submitted to the indignity with kindness and patience. 

 

“I think maybe you ought to keep the sweats for now, just to make this as painless as possible.” Jesse suggested, a hint of humor with no trace of mockery in his eyes. “Let’s get you to the living room and I’ll bring the Jeep up.”

 

Walking got progressively easier the more he did it and so, while his host was out bringing around the vehicle, Hanzo tottered around the room gathering his things together: the plastic bag went in the bookbag, the folded stack of clothes went on top of that, Jesse’s gloves came out of his jacket pocket, and his jacket went on his body. The Jeep, as it turned out, was an actual, modern hover-vehicle painted NPS white with the green stripe and shields. On the way out of town, north on the unnamed, unmarked road that was once Highway 14, he pointed out the sights -- the town itself was once a more frequently sought-out tourist attraction, was still a national historic site, and had the cluster of carefully preserved mercantile buildings, saloons, even an old church, to prove it, along with younger, but equally abandoned, structures clustered around the edge of town, only a handful of which were still occupied. That handful consisted entirely of the Garden of the Desert, a compound of four greenhouses and a sprawling two-story Pueblo Revival  _ hacienda _ , fully enclosed behind an adobe-and-fieldstone wall, the name of the place spelled out in jewel-bright mosaic on the arch over the main entry gate.

 

“Jack and Gabe and their gradually expanding pack of mostly-tame hellhounds call that place home. It’s pretty nice, actually. Gabe’s antisocial tendencies don’t influence his interior decorating decisions.” A pause. “Well, okay, they don’t influence them  _ much. _ And he’s a damn fine cook, all other considerations aside. They both tend the greenhouses, though Jack and Ana -- that’s the neighbor up the valley, lives in the hills with her husband, Reinhardt -- do most of the alchemy, for want of a better term.”

 

Hanzo thought of unnaturally willful smoke and curls of shadow and far too many sharp, white teeth and the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Gabe isn’t...completely human, is he?”

 

Jesse glanced sidelong at him and was silent for a long moment. “I wondered if you saw that while you were…” Another, longer silence. “That’s...kinda not my story to tell. I can say, with total confidence and all joking aside, that I would trust him with my life, and a lot of other people’s lives beside. But, no, he ain’t. Neither is Jack, he just wears it better. If you’re ever in a position where you need help -- like the kind of help you got from me, but I’m not available, there’s nobody better to call upon, and that’s a promise.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Hanzo found a smile actually crawling onto his face and he let it stay. “So the...blend...you got from them -- it’s some kind of medicine?”

 

“Yes. The kind of injury you’ve suffered is tricky to heal -- your body and your soul have to grow back together and, right now, you’re vulnerable to...relapse is such a stupid word here but...that’s kinda what it is. Your spirit’s still only lightly tethered to your body. Your body’s vulnerable without your spirit in it. All of you is more susceptible to weirdness in your sleep, as we just saw.” They reached the junction with the actual charted highway, traffic coming and going in each direction. “You should take that once a night, just before bed, for seven days. It’ll help strengthen the bonds, heal the spiritual wounds, make you...not forget, exactly, but make the memory less of a scar.”

 

“That’s good, because I would prefer not to forget.” Hanzo, greatly daring, rested a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, lightly, and snatched it back. “You saved my life, and for that I’m grateful.”

 

“I -- “

 

“Quiet.” Hanzo smiled ruthlessly. “You saved my life, and I  _ do not _ want to forget that, or you.”

 

“It’s probably for the best if you did.” They were, Hanzo realized, approaching roads, and landmarks, that were thoroughly familiar now. “I can’t  _ order _ you to stay away from the desert down south but, for your own safety, you should absolutely do so. Something out there decided you were interesting enough to mess with personally -- something out there might’a gotten a taste of you and might’a  _ liked _ it and that? That’s dangerous, more dangerous than I can probably make you appreciate just now.” Softly. “I don’t want anything worse to happen to you, Hanzo. Please don’t invite it in the front door.”

 

“I will try not to do so.” His temporary home loomed out of the twilight -- for an instant, it was on the tip of his tongue to ask how Jesse knew the address, realized he’d probably gotten it from his driver’s license, and struggled to find something else to say as they pulled up to the curb. “Where -- where would you suggest I go, then?”

 

“Black Mesa’s one of the most beautiful places there is -- and the mountains north of Los Alamos, particularly at this time of year.” Jesse reached over and unlocked the doors, activated the hazard lights and, before Hanzo could fully process what he was doing, got out and opened his door for him. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

 

“I promise.” Hanzo hefted his bag over his shoulder and stood clear of the door. “And I will take your advice to heart, as well.”

 

“If you’re still not feeling a hundred percent after the week is out, call me.” Jesse pressed something into his hand as they walked to the door of the condo together. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, that’s my promise.”

“Thank you again.” Hanzo paused with his hand on the exterior identification lock. “Would you...like to come in? For coffee?”

 

“I’d best be gettin’ back, but thank you kindly for the offer.” He tipped his hat, and Hanzo’s knees tried their hardest to transform into bendy gelatin again, successfully enough that it was all he could do to stand and watch as he walked back to the Jeep and pulled away.

 

He was, in fact, still standing there holding onto the lockbox when the front door flew open behind him, a shadow fell over him, and his brother demanded, in a voice that promised something immediate and horrific for someone if he didn’t like what he heard, “Where. The actual fuck. Have you been?”


	3. Chapter 3

Hanzo turned his face to the cloudy, light-pollution washed sky and closed his eyes as the evening breeze washed over him. It was perceptibly warmer in the city than it was out on the high desert, but still cleaner than the air of nearly any other city he’d ever breathed, and he drew it deep into his lungs, once, twice, thrice. On the third, he expelled it with a silent prayer for the intercession of his ancestors, preferably all of them, hopefully at least Grandmother Hanako, who until the hour of her passage from the world possessed the ability to defuse any form of about-to-explode much younger Genji right up the point of detonation. It was that sweet and gentle nature he needed right now, the precise words necessary to calm and soothe, the iron-spined powers of almost courtly decorum necessary to avoid having a screaming argument with his little brother on the doorstep in front of who knew how many neighbors and/or housemates. Because that would, of course, be the absolute perfect way to end a day that was already sprawled out insouciantly on its side giving reality an assortment of rude gestures.

 

He turned to face Genji and found him standing in a physically contorted state trapped almost precisely between flailing limbs-akimbo outrage and fists planted on his hips primarily to avoid strangling anyone outrage. The result was more than vaguely disturbing to the human eye and seemed to involve far more joints that he actually possessed. His hair, recently re-dyed the nature-insulting shades of acidic green he favored, looked as though he had spent a considerable quantity of time alternately tugging at it in a transport of some strong emotion or smoothing it back down in an effort to avoid broadcasting said transport to any observers without any particular success. His face was a mask of mutually contradictory emotions, his eyes were bloodshot in a manner that strongly suggested a lack of sleep instead of chemical mood enhancement, and his eyelashes were stuck together in the sort of spiky clumps they developed only when he’d been crying and he was _still crying_ , _there were_ _tears in his eyes_ , and Hanzo dropped his bag and threw his arms around his wonderful, terrible little brother and embraced him tightly. “Shhh. It’s all right.”

 

Genji’s return embrace seriously compressed his ribcage and nearly lifted him off the ground with the force of it, his brother’s voice ragged in his ears. “You’re alive  _ you’re alive _ where have you  _ been _ I’ve been so worried  _ I filed a missing persons report _ \--”

 

“Genji,” Hanzo wheezed perhaps a bit more dramatically than was strictly necessary even given the circumstances, “I need air. And a  _ missing persons report? _ You called the  _ police? _ ”

 

His brother let go only enough to relocate the force of his grip from ribcage to shoulders and Hanzo was absolutely certain he was going to have a couple Genji-hand-shaped-bruises in the morning. Some of the half-crazed intensity of emotion had bled from his face but his eyes remained bright -- irridescently glittering lit-from-within green as well as tears, an altogether dangerous sign. “ _ Four days _ , Hanzo. You have been gone for  _ four days. _ I was expecting you home Saturday at the  _ latest. _ So I ask again:  _ where have you been? _ And also: who was  _ that _ and how badly am I going to have to  _ maim him? _ ” 

 

_ My car broke down in the desert, something nearly ate my soul, he’s an NPS ranger too beautiful for this world please do not kill him. _ It was on the tip of his tongue to say it, driven by the force of his brother’s fear, and the only thing that kept the words behind his teeth was the knowledge that there were all exactly the wrong thing to say, particularly the soul-eating bit, which he was completely certain Genji would not accept with anything resembling serenity no matter how many mind-altering substances he might be consuming at any given time. Neither was he going to let it go, the grip on his shoulders tightening, eyes narrowing a dangerous fraction, and Hanzo reached for the first semi-reasonable explanation to come to mind and blurted out, “I -- I -- was enjoying what I was doing and lost track of time!”

 

The look that took up residence on Genji’s face was equal parts  _ I cannot believe you just said that, aniki _ and  _ WHAT _ mixed liberally with  _ oh fucking no you didn’t. _ “Hanzo. Discovering you have a great deal in common with one of your classmates on the first day of the semester and spending two hours aimlessly wandering the quad talking is  _ enjoying what you were doing _ and  _ losing track of time _ . Spending an hour contemplating the menu at Starbucks while trying to work up the nerve to make a pass at the hot new barista is  _ enjoying what you were doing _ and  _ losing track of time _ .  _ Driving out into the desert and disappearing for four fucking days? _ That is something else entirely and I’m vaguely insulted you even tried to pull that on me and  _ for fuck’s sake I was about to call home and tell mother to start watching for ransom demands _ .”

 

“Genji, I was in no danger.”  _ Except for the point where YOUR SOUL was almost eaten _ , the rational voice of rationality remarked, dryly, apparently in league with the self-destructive desire to tell his brother  _ everything _ . “My car broke down -- I walked to one of the ranger stations. I stayed with him a few days until the arrangements to retrieve my disabled vehicle could be made, and then he brought me home.”

 

“And you  _ enjoyed _ that.” And  _ there _ was the world’s most sarcastic human making himself known.

 

Hanzo shrugged slightly, Genji’s grip on his shoulders loosening enough that the gesture mostly dislodged it. “Not the breaking down and walking through the freezing desert in the middle of the night, no. Everything else? I managed to get quite a bit of work done and the ranger was excellently helpful and  _ completely professional _ the entire time we were together.” He bent, picked up his bag, and schooled his face into what he hoped was a serenely competent mask sufficient to cover a gigantic sack of barely believable lies. “I’m sorry I frightened you -- I lost cellular service and -- “

 

“She couldn’t find you, Hanzo.” Genji whispered, fiercely. “I  _ asked her _ to find you and she said you were  _ gone _ , you were  _ nowhere _ , I thought the police would find you lying dead somewhere -- “

 

“I would not do that to you.” Hanzo snapped a glare at him, equally fierce.

 

“I know that.” Genji did not quite reach for him again, though it was a near thing. “And the world continues to be graciously oversupplied with other ways for everyone to leave it.”

 

“I do not know why she couldn’t find me.” Hanzo could not meet his brother’s eyes and speak that lie at the same time, instead opting to step past him toward the door, head down as though watching his step. “As I said: I was perfectly safe. It has, however, been a very long few days and I want nothing more than my own bed. You cannot imagine how uncomfortable ranger station cots are until you’ve had to sleep on one involuntarily.”

 

“Yes I can.” He could feel the weight of Genji’s stare laying between his shoulderblades like the tip of a knife. “I let Zen drag me up to that commune outside Angel Fire. I’m pretty sure their beds are Works Progress Administration surplus from the ‘40s. The  _ nineteen _ -forties.”

 

Hanzo chuckled, politely, thumbed open the front door and was promptly bowled back onto the steps by the force of the charge that greeted him.

 

“You’re  _ home! _ ” Hana Song was, like his brother, a student in the tech end of video game design. Unlike him, she had absolutely no hesitation when it came to hitting him and so she did, and with a startling amount of force for someone that weighed perhaps a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. “Do you have  _ any _ idea how  _ worried _ we’ve all been, you  _ jerk _ , you lousy inconsiderate  _ jackass _ , you -- “ She stopped, glared up at him, and yanked him inside. “Let’s not do this on the front stoop. Genji, are you coming?”

“Hana, let it go. He’s not dead and he apparently hasn’t been shacked up with persons unknown, either.” Genji stepped in and closed the door, casually deflecting the killing glare that Hanzo flung in his direction.

 

“Oh, so Person Unknown is free and clear then, hmm? Good, because from what I could see he was a  _ stone fox. _ Where’d you find him?” Hana gave him a quick hug in apology, gears shifting as quickly as that, and snatched the object Ranger McCree had pressed into his hand on their parting. “Oh -- oh  _ holy crap. _ He’s a  _ park ranger? _ Are you  _ serious? _ ”

 

Hanzo snatched the object -- a card -- back and physically resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Car broke down, he rescued me, drove me home, perfect gentleman, I would like to go to bed now.”

 

“Oh, it’s  _ perfect gentleman _ and not  _ completely professional _ when you talk to  _ her _ about it?” Genji asked and now Hanzo found himself resisting the urge to spin hard enough to smack his wonderful, terrible  _ asshole _ brother firmly in the gut with his bag. “There’s a not inconsiderable difference between those two things, brother.”

 

“No there isn’t.” Hanzo replied and, fuck it, introduced his bag to Genji’s midsection in a fashion not entirely unlike a hip-check. “In any case, yes, he is a real park ranger, he was extremely kind to me, I had not noticed his appearance, I am entirely sorry I worried you all, and now I am going to go upstairs, take a shower, send a number of groveling emails to my professors, and then go to bed. If that is  _ acceptable _ to you two?”

 

“I think we should get Lu and Zen down here and make a family vote of it,” Hana crossed her arms over her chest but nonetheless stepped aside at his growl. “You haven’t heard the last of this, Hanzo Shimada. You, of all people, don’t get to go galavanting off for whole days at a time and then stroll back home without a reasonable explanation -- “

 

Hanzo leaned over the second story balustrade. “ _ Genji does that literally all the time _ .”

 

“ _ That’s Genji!” _ Hana shouted back. “ _ You _ are the grounded and responsible Shimada sibling, and if you two are going to  _ switch personalities _ you can’t do it at random, there needs to be  _ at least _ two weeks written notice!”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind for the future.” Hanzo shouted down from the third floor landing.

 

“Be sure you do!” Hana shouted back. “Seriously, are you going to call him back? Because if you don’t call him, I totally will. I want a look at that in broad daylight.”

 

“ _ Good night, Hana.” _ Hanzo stepped into his room, closed the door, dropped his bag, took the pillow from his bed and screamed into it for five minutes because, sometimes, there was literally nothing else to do if he wished to retain even a modicum of sanity.

 

Then, because he was indeed the grounded and responsible Shimada sibling, he turned on his holo-terminal and wrote the requisite groveling email of woe and dismay that went into exquisitely embroidered detail about POS rental cars, wandering through the desert at night pursued by coyotes, and the almost total lack of cellular service out in the hinterlands beyond the city limits, which he then forwarded to the four professors whose classes he had involuntarily cut, checked the queue to make certain that the art history paper he had finished last week was still set to go out first thing in the morning and sat, staring, at the little white rectangle of plastic laminate Ranger McCree had pressed into his hand. Plain white bordered in vivid green (National Park Service/US Department of the Interior), the inverted arrowhead seal, his name and contact information (Jesse McCree, Education Liaison, Special Incident Command at Cerrillos National Monument, address, cellular code, email). The laminate coating caught the dim light of even his holoscreen and refracted it in a now-familiar geometric pattern, the card feeling warmer in his hand than could be accounted for even by a transfer of body heat and, without meaning to do so, he pressed it to his lips and slipped it into his underwear drawer, where he was reasonably certain Hana would be completely unwilling to go fishing should she come looking for it. He almost started a second email but acknowledged, if only to himself, that it was considerably beyond pathetic to write a man who had merely been doing his duty, even the outstandingly weird parts, particularly when he didn’t actually have anything to say. At least for the moment. He had a week-long course of medicine to take and he realized that he was,  _ even more pathetically _ , hoping that whatever it was wouldn’t work so he’d have the excuse.

 

“You are an  _ outstanding _ coward of the highest possible caliber,” He informed his reflection in the upstairs bathroom mirror as he stripped out of the borrowed sweats even as he acknowledged them as  _ another _ good reason to contact the ranger again -- they were  _ only borrowed _ , after all, he couldn’t keep the man’s  _ clothes. _ “Hello, Ranger McCree, this is Hanzo Shimada, you know, the one whose soul you saved from being eaten? I would just like to meet in order to return your tee-shirt and sweatpants and would you possibly also like to have dinner? Perhaps coffee? I promise I will keep my housemates and brother as far from you as humanly possible and once this exchange is done we will never have to see one another again and  _ could you be any worse at this, for the love of the gods, stop. _ ”

 

“Hanzo?” The voice on the other side of the bathroom door belonged to Tekhartha Zenyatta, his brother’s constant companion in dubious sobriety and bendy activities that could probably get them arrested in at least thirty states and seventeen foreign countries. “Are you well?”

 

“I’m fine, Zen. Just talking to myself.” Hanzo replied, and turned on the water in the shower. “My apologies if I disturbed you.”

 

“Not at all, my friend.” A warmly melodious chuckle from the hallway. “If you wish to speak, know that I am here for you.”

 

“Thank you, Zen.”

 

He should, he supposed, have a slightly more antagonistic relationship with the man who was arguably corrupting the quite thoroughly and voluntarily corruptible morals of his younger brother, but somehow he couldn’t find it in himself to work up any serious quantity of animus for the Tekhartha. For one thing, he couldn’t look at the man without perceiving him as some sort of elegant, kindhearted, slightly baked at all times praying mantis, who looked out at the world with enormous jewelled eyes and saw a bunch of people in dire need of enormously gentle talk therapy, palliative massage, and huge quantities of psychoactive recreational chemicals designed lubricate the interaction of minds and bodies with other minds and bodies. Sometimes literally. And therein lay the problem: Zen was an actual trained clinical psychologist underneath the doofy exterior and if there was anyone in the house to whom he would, through accident or design, give up the whole  _ something freakishly weird happened in the desert and my soul was almost eaten and somehow the ranger saved me and I have no idea how to feel or what to think about any of this _ thing it was most definitely him. Possibly over tea. No, check that:  _ definitely _ over tea. Hanzo made a mental note to take his medicinal beverage alone in his room if at all possible.

 

That night, at least, it was possible: by the time he finished cleaning up and went downstairs to the kitchen, the common areas were devoid of life. A faint trace of haunting melody drifted down from above, testiment to the presence of Lucio Correia dos Santos, their fourth housemate, who was likely as deep in the process of musical composition as he ought to be in the process of visual composition. The absence of Genji and Zen from the sitting room, where the holotank and all the entertainment systems were located meant they were likely upstairs, entertaining one another somewhat more athletic ways. The absence of Hana from the same meant she was cramming for a midterm, having laid in a supply of snacks and energy beverages some time before.

 

He extracted the package from its anonymous plastic bag wrapping, feeling entirely too much like an operative in an action movie just before the villains came crashing in through the windows to steal his laboriously acquired intelligence or, possibly, like a teenager about to open his first stroke mag purchased under plain brown wrappers -- entirely too nervous by half and for no good reason. It was  _ medicine. _ It  _ was _ medicine. He absolutely was not about to drink something prescribed to him by some unknown person living in the middle of a nowhere who was close personal friends with a smoke monster and the world’s most desireable park ranger.

 

“It’s medicine, not a drug,” He told himself, as he examined the tiny, elegant, single-serving tea bell and the tiny, elegant tin, outside etched in a delicate swirling mandala in a dozen shades of blue, the lid covered in a freshly printed sticker written in a language he couldn’t read but which was, he knew from a couple hundred credit hours worth of art history classes, probably some form of Arabic. He firmly ignored the voice of rationality that insisted on pointing out drugs and medicines were exactly the same damned thing.

 

He snapped a picture of it and asked his phone for a translation, which it provided after a moment of taxing its little computer brain.  _ For the restoration of weakened bonds between spirit and flesh _ , it said.  _ Take one cup daily for seven days, preferably before sleep. Instructions: steep one teaspoon of the loose mixture in a cup of hot but not boiling water for no more than three minutes. Jesse tells me that you are a gentle, wounded soul who came by your injuries through no fault of your own, and for this reason I will tell you that the addition of a little honey and lemon will not harm the therapeutic qualities of this blend at all. May the Merciful and the Just stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk. _ Brewed, it smelled wonderfully rich and herbaceous, a deep green-golden color even before he added a dollop of honey. He admitted to himself, after the first sip, that it probably didn’t need the honey: he couldn’t place any individual flavor but the way they blent together on his tongue was delicious beyond any other herbal infusion that he could recall, the perfume of it filling his head with every breath.

 

He put the tin in his section of the kitchen cabinets and set the cup and the tea bell in the sink for the morning, feeling the tug of sleep on his limbs and head and eyes already, knowing he might just fall asleep on a landing if he didn’t seek his bed at once. He was out before his head touched the pillow and that night, when he dreamt for the thousandth time of coiling sky blue scales and air that tasted of the oncoming storm and lightning-stroke eyes that weighed him and measured him and turned away, he felt the contemptuous weight of that silent judgment slightly less.

 

*

 

Hanzo woke five minutes before his alarm was set to go off and, for the first time in a very long time, he did not simply reach over and turn it off and roll out of bed with the intent of getting a fresh and early start on the day. Instead he grabbed it, yanked it until the plug either exited the outlet in the wall or the cord parted company with the back of the clock itself, dropped it in the wastepaper basket, rolled over and went back to sleep. He only began crawling vaguely in the direction of consciousness again when something -- something persistent and annoying -- managed to work its way through the cocoon of formlessly dreamy somnolence wound around his mind and soul like the world’s warmest, softest blanket. A sound? It  _ felt _ like a sound even as his body refused to admit that he was hearing anything at all, not birdsong from the branches of the ginkgo growing in the side yard nearest his window, none of the usual morning sounds from his housemates going about their daily routines, not even his own breath and heartbeat. The worst part was he couldn’t even put a finger on  _ why _ it was so irritating, it just  _ was _ , relentlessly, grindingly so and when his eyes finally snapped open it was with a barely restrained  _ urge to kill _ pulsing hotly behind them and it was probably a good thing he had nothing sharp or heavy in easy reach and he was not in his own bed. Instead, he was looking again at a fieldstone kiva graced with a little rearing horse statue and the sort of happy little flowering cactus that a neo-futurist clone of Bob Ross would have painted because he decided the horse statue needed a friend, curled on his side in the cushions of the world’s most comfortable couch, nested in the world’s most comfortable throw blankets, listening to the world’s most aggravating non-sound claw at the inside of his being.

 

_ How _ was the first coherent thought to make itself known, followed closely by  _ Genji is going to have hysterical screaming hysterics _ and then  _ how HOW how the fucking HOW? _

 

“Gabe.”

 

_ That _ was new: a voice he’d never heard before, period, not only in this specific context, deep and gravelly, the sort of voice one could clearly imagine growling orders over poorly functioning communications systems in the middle of a life-or-death crisis  _ or _ offering a pep-talk on the sidelines to a scrappy-but-legitimately-terrible little league team that lost more than they won and still got pizza and milkshakes at the end of the season because he was just that sort of coach, warm and rough all at once. 

 

“ _ Gabe. _ ”

 

And also beginning to experience a certain urge toward homicidal violence, if the tightness in his tone was anything to go by.

 

_ “Gabriel!” _

 

The psychotically aggravating sound-not-sound abruptly ceased.

 

_ “What? _ ” Now  _ there _ was a voice he knew: the smoke monster. The smoke monster somewhere  _ traumatically _ close by and Hanzo froze, involuntarily, torn between the desire to pull the blankets over his head in a childish impulse to test their monster-repellent properties and an equally potent urge to leap to his feet and start demanding answers, beginning immediately and lasting until he was fully satisfied with the results. Also nearby: footsteps on the hardwood floor, moving light and swift, accompanied by a gently rhythmic  _ taptaptap _ ing.

 

“Hon, I know you’re worried, but you really,  _ really _ have to stop doing that. There are  _ non-predatory species _ hunkering down in the bushes, watching the house with murderous intent. Unless you want Jesse to walk into a low-budget remake of a Hitchcock flick when he gets home, you need to take it down a notch.” Little League Commando’s tone was far, far gentler than its native amount of gargled with whiskey and fifty caliber shell casings seemed to allow and, moving slowly, Hanzo eased himself up out of the defensive blanket-nest, stealthily, stealthily, and peered over the back of the couch.

 

The smoke monster was, at the moment,  _ particularly _ smoky, a barely humanoid mass of vaporous shadowy coils interspersed with a completely excessive number of smoldering crimson eyes and the fangy slash of mouths, plural. It hovered more than sat in the cushioned window seat overlooking the front porch, a crepuscular appendage that couldn’t quite be called an arm holding the curtains back just far enough to let in a shaft of wan sunlight that clearly, obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with illuminating it and also for it to see out with multiple sets of eyes. Jack, by way of extreme personal contrast, looked as though all the color had been systematically siphoned out of his hair and skin by extradimensional pigment thieves, leaving behind white and the faintest hint of ash and the bluest blue eyes Hanzo had ever seen. Eyes, point in fact, that were fixed unseeing at a point somewhere above the smoke monster’s putative head; the cane he leaned on, despite not looking like the traditional red-tipped-white, was clearly a sensory assistive device of some kind.

 

_ Where the fuck IS HE, Jack. _ It wasn’t a question, it wasn’t spoken out loud, and the intensity of the emotion in it involuntarily tightened Hanzo’s throat, sent a thrill of fear straight to his limbic system.  _ It’s not that far to the city, he should have been back HOURS ago. _

 

“Gabe,” Jack -- it had to be Jack, there was no one else in the room -- replied, in the sort of carefully neutral tone that suggested, strongly, some variation of this conversation had occurred at least a few dozen times before and would likely occur a few dozen times again in the future, “You know I hate to be the one to remind you of this but, well,  _ he’s not actually seventeen anymore. _ He is, in fact, a grown-ass adult who is  _ entirely capable _ of taking care of himself in most situations, including the ones that might,  _ just might _ , involve shacking up somewhere for a one night stand with an alarmingly handsome MFA grad student that he rescued from mortal peril.”

 

_ Holy Mother of Darkness, Jack. _ The tenebrous mass on the windowseat twitched uncontrollably for several seconds and Hanzo found that he couldn’t really blame it, because he was doing the same  _ and _ blushing furiously  _ and _ having to fight the urge to leap up and defend his honor at considerable and vituperative length.  _ In what fucking universe is THAT a good outcome? _

 

“This one, in which commitment and further emotional involvement-free gratitude sex is completely a thing that happens.” In tones of ruthless practicality and Hanzo found himself wishing he could just disappear or spontaneously combust or any option but hide behind the back of his rescuer’s couch and listen to this. “And, of all the things that  _ could _ be keeping him away from home, I’m willing to lay that down as the  _ least bad _ , okay?”

 

_ No it is NOT OKAY! _ The smoke monster howled wordlessly, its form shuddering, turning in on itself, coalescing into a significantly more human shape, albeit one with at least six extra pairs of eyes. “He’s  _ vulnerable _ right now, Jack. They  _ both _ are. He’d  _ never _ be that irresponsible so soon after having to forge a connection that strong. What the Hell are you even thinking?”

 

“I’m thinking that you’re finally not broadcasting  _ where is he where is he if he’s not dead when he walks through that door I’m going to kill him _ at everything with a functioning medulla oblongata for fifty miles square around this building.” Jack reached up and touched an in-ear communication device of some variety. “Ana? Yeah, don’t take the shot, I think he’s actually down off the ledge.”

 

“I  _ cannot _ believe you,” The smoke monster glared with three fewer pairs of eyes. “ _ Our son _ is missing and you’re -- “

 

“Our son just turned onto the far end of the drag, he’ll be here in ten minutes, max.” Jack smiled and Hanzo sank down below the level of the couch and, this time, he did pull the blankets over his head. “Seriously, I can only imagine what you’d be like if you actually gave birth to him.”

 

“Not. Funny.” 

 

“ _ Kinda _ funny.”

 

“ _ No. _ ”

 

The ranger’s vehicle glided to a nearly-silent halt outside and, summoning all his courage, Hanzo peered out from beneath the shield of blankets, trusting in the general depth of the cushions and the current paucity of natural light to assist in concealing his presence. Actual, physical keys jingled and actual, physical locks disengaged, the door creaked open with the sepulchral moan he recalled from that first night not yet a week prior and the ranger stepped in, a cardboard pastry box tucked in the crook of one arm, looking several orders of magnitude wearier than he had -- how many hours before? It couldn’t have been that many, really -- and froze on his own doorstep, abruptly pinioned as he was between the smoke monster on one side and the Little League Commando on the other and Hanzo felt such immediate and complete sympathy for that impossible situation it was all he could do to hold still and silent.

 

“Jesse Nathaniel McCree,” the smoke monster said in the sort of smoothly menacing tone that promised quite a number of things and not a one of them pleasant, “where the actual fuck have you been?”

 

Jesse held out the pastry box. “And a good morning to you, too.”

 

Smoky the Horrible Tentacular Menace accepted the offering and glanced down at it. “What.”

 

“You like their flourless chili chocolate thingamabobs, right? I was in the neighborhood, so I figured I’d pick some up. Admittedly, I also figured I’d see you at  _ your _ place, so my best laid plans are already put awry.” He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it on the pegboard, and kicked the door closed behind him. “Jack.”

 

“Kid,” And not even  _ pretending _ to conceal his amusement, which Hanzo was willing to put down to some combination of extreme personal courage, decades-long interpersonal relationships, and quite possibly some form of not particularly well-sublimated deathwish. “Madre here’s been flipping out and I’d appreciate it, if you’re going to be away from the nest for any length of time henceforth, that you not turn your cell off because there was nearly a murder. Possibly more than one. Coffee?”

 

“I would  _ adore _ coffee.” Jesse offered the smoke monster the sort of smile that, properly deployed in a diplomatic context, could probably bring about world peace. “Come on,  _ mamá _ , let’s have some breakfast and I’ll tell you all about it.”

 

The smoke monster took the sort of deep, cleansing breath which with Hanzo was intimately familiar and murmured, “I see you two are intent upon forgetting that I fucking know where you sleep. Okay. Fine. Let’s eat, and while we’re eating you will describe in  _ exquisite detail _ exactly where you’ve been for the last sixteen hours.”

 

“Frankly, my bet was down on shacked up in a No Tell Motel with the scorching art student -- “

 

“OH MY GOD.” For the first time that day, Hanzo felt  _ absolute vindication _ because the ranger -- his ranger, his perfect gentleman ranger -- sounded at least as appalled as he felt. “ _ Jack. _ ”

 

“ _ Or I could be wrong. _ ” Still palpably amused and Hanzo wondered silently which Hell one was sent to for deliberately tripping blind senior citizens as often as possible. “Incidentally, kid, you  _ sound _ like fifteen miles of beat up donkey crap that’s also on fire so I can only imagine what you look like. Where’d the thingamabobs come from?”

 

“Sugarmama’s in Flagstaff. Arizona.” Gabriel, now sounding significantly less monstrous, growled; cutlery and plates rattled on the table a few arm-lengths away. “Which, if I recall correctly, is almost four hundred miles one way from here so I think an explanation is in order.”

 

Hanzo smelled and heard coffee being poured and someone taking a long, fortifying drink of the same. “After yesterday’s excitement, Hanzo wanted more than anything else to go home and, since I couldn’t really blame him for that, I drove him up to the city and dropped him off with instructions to call me if things were still off-kilter after a week or so.” A pause, as plates were passed and pastries distributed and more coffee consumed. “I...felt a little restless after I left him, so I took a drive to Mesa Urraca just to check on the ward boundary up there and, since I was  _ still _ not feeling right when I got back, I decided it was time to walk the Red Zone perimeter.”

 

“The perimeter,” Jack, carefully neutral.

 

“Yup,” Jesse, the soul of unconcern.

 

“The perimeter which is over seventeen hundred miles round trip, covers four states, innumerable liminal sub-boundaries, and is generally not left to one person to patrol alone for those reasons.” Gabriel, flatly, without a trace of actual question in his tone.

 

“Look, I’m not sayin’ I lolligagged around in any particular place. I just wanted to get a feel for how things might be changing out on the tracks. Something ain’t right and it’s getting less right all the time -- the fact that Hanzo nearly got snatched up within spitting distance of Tsé Bit’a’í is proof of that. A year ago nothing, no matter how strong it might be, would have dared.  _ Could _ have dared, even.” A sigh. “Upshot is, the boundary there is unstable in a way that makes me think someone, or something, has been pushing to make it so.”

 

“You’re probably not wrong,” Gabriel admitted, ungrudgingly. “Fareeha came down from Los Alamos last night and brought some intel from her friend upstairs. Turns out, the experimental high energy science lab’s been detecting some unusually strong and coherent electromagnetic anomalies inside the boundaries of the Red Zone for the last ten weeks. They’re setting up a semi-permanent research station in the old Albuquerque International Sunport terminal complex.”

 

“Think I saw some of that going down. Security’s not amateur hour, I’ll give ‘em that.” It sounded as though he were fighting a desperate rearguard action against a yawn, one that failed spectacularly. “Could you top me off? Thank you kindly.”

 

“You’re welcome.” Jack again and, then, quietly, “How long has it been since you last slept?”

 

“I got a solid eight Friday into Saturday.” The sound of rapturous sipping. “You still make the best -- “

 

“You can’t keep this up,  _ mijo. _ ” Gabriel, his tone unusually gentle. “You’re not going to be any good to anyone if you grind yourself past the point of physical and mental exhaustion. You’re almost beyond the edge even now. Let us -- “

 

“Do what?” And the pure and perfect weariness in his voice twisted Hanzo’s heart. “Tie can’t be cut until his soul’s firmly reattached to where it’s supposed to be. I sent him back to his real life with Ana’s spirit-mending medicine to speed the process along as much as possible, but it’s not like it can be  _ rushed. _ If I sleep now, while we’re still tied so close together, we’ll share a single dreamspace and that’ll pull him back here whether he wants to come or not.” Hanzo’s heart almost stopped, his breath caught and he knew, suddenly and absolutely, that only part of him was here and the rest was somewhere else, like it had been before. “It’s hard enough letting this one go as it is, so I would ask that you not invite me to make it harder.”

 

“Jesse,” And there was no disguising the shock, or the fear, in just that one word.

 

“It’d be one thing if he were only pretty on the  _ outside. _ Easier, for one.” A pause, a quiet sigh, the tired smile visible in his voice when he next spoke. “But he’s beautiful all the way through and he was hurt before he got here, before this happened to him, and if I were going to guess? That’s what caught something’s eye -- that wound in his spirit, however it got made, and it’s going to keep being catnip for whatever’s out there. So it’s best that we all do what we have to do to keep him as far from here as possible and for me that means staying awake.  _ All the awake. _ ”

 

“That’s pretty crazy, kid.” Jack, dryly.

 

“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m willing to entertain it. Otherwise? Put on another pot of coffee.”

 

*

 

Hanzo descended the stairs slowly, keeping a firm grip on the balustrade at all times, which had the generally palliative effect of making it feel as though he were not, in fact, going to float away at any moment, no matter how light his head might be and his head was, metaphorically speaking, made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium and other such substances that laughed at the weight of air.

 

_ You should tell them what is happening to you, _ the soothing voice of pure and perfect rationality murmured at him as he made his way to the kitchen, his stomach rumbling irritable counterpoint.  _ The people who love you deserve that much, the truth. Even if they can do nothing else, they can support you until whatever this...thing...might be is done. _

 

The voice of reason, he was willing to admit in the relative privacy of his own mind, had a point. He certainly did owe the people he loved, and who at least cared for him, the bare minimum gift of the truth. He most assuredly owed his brother, who had abandoned the life he was building at home and followed him to this nearly forgotten corner of the world, considerably more than that. The man whose secrets he was endeavoring to keep had not, at any point, either asked or demanded any such silence from him and, moreover, they were barely acquaintances of a handful of days, with no obligatory weight of care or consideration between them. He was merely denying himself the most basic form of comfort, rest in mind and body, in order to give the soul of a man he barely knew the best protection he could offer. And he was already weary from the effort required to restore that soul to its proper place to begin with.

 

_ And he said he thought you were beautiful _ , the quietly sardonic voice Hanzo had come to associate with all his worst impulses murmured mockingly in the in the back of his mind. Which was also true and, he supposed, proof that no man was perfect, not even the ranger, but hardly anything that ought to affect his decision-making no matter the circumstances. Fortunately, the kitchen was empty and no man living could comment on the extent and severity of the color that bloomed in his cheeks as that thought took root in the back of his mind and started growing thorns.

 

Lightheadedness and hunger, on the other hand, most definitely would eventually affect his decision-making, whether he wanted them to or not. The last meal he could remember eating was the breakfast the ranger --  _ Jesse, he did in fact say you could call him Jesse _ \-- had made and that was  _ Saturday morning. _ He should have taken him up on the unspoken offer of fajitas and used that opportunity to interrogate everyone he met about everything that was going on and determine if there was anything he could do to actually  _ help. _ And he realized, as he began assembling the ingredients for his repast, he very much wished to help. He owed at least that much to the man who had opened his door in the middle of the night and thereafter gave freely of his home and his labor, even if one could argue that doing so was part of his job, everything he’d done since was now well above the call of duty alone. 

 

As he put a pot of  _ kukicha _ on to steep, he began wrestling with the practicalities. Genji was not the one least likely to believe the entire truth about the situation in which he found himself -- that would be Hana who was, of all of them, the lone structural-rationalist in a household full of moony creative types, himself notwithstanding. No, Genji would be the challenge when it came time to convince them that taking action was a thing he should do because he was, like it or not, involved now. His brother might, in all likelihood, be inclined to smile, nod, and then end that course of action decisively with a discreet call to their mother followed by a visit from Size Extra Large employees of their family’s corporate security concern and a private jet back to Hanamura, with no particular consent of his own needed or desired. It would greatly depend on whether Genji’s protectiveness of his person outweighed Genji’s antipathy for admitting that their mother was right about anything, ever.

 

Whole grain bread went into the toaster, nori and water into the saucepan on the stove,  and he contemplated angles of attack as he diced a stalk of green onion and a few fresh shiso leaves. Provided he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then Genji could not be excluded from any subsequent plans or action without there being Consequences. He would also have to be convinced that any plans and actions were of the Good and Necessary sort, or else there would also be Consequences. He added hot water to the miso paste, whisked, and gently scooped it into the simmering nori stock in the saucepan, along with a few cubes of tofu from the container Zenyatta had prepared and labeled FOR COMMON USE the week prior. The scent of gently heating soup perfumed the air. Genji was not completely unmovable provided one used a strong enough lever and stood on firm enough ground. Often, with him, having more than one person whose opinion -- or judgment -- he respected telling him a thing could turn the tide.

 

Lucio and Hana were his brother’s closest friends -- the first and still the best that he had made since arriving in New Mexico. Genji loved them and trusted them and treated them with considerably more respect than he bestowed upon their actual biological family. Hanzo did not, however, think he placed their judgment above his own. He mixed the natto together with a generous amount of mentsuyu, spooned it over his toast, sprinkled with onion and shiso and considered, as he ate, how best to approach Tekhartha Zenyatta and recruit him to the cause. Doing so had multiple tactical and strategic advantages: Zenyatta was legitimately the only person Hanzo knew with the ability to completely derail Genji at a full steam of emotion, which would undoubtedly become quite necessary somewhere in the immediate future. It did not quite reach Grandmother Hanako of beloved memory levels of self-discipline reinstitution but, then, nothing did and that was not to be held against him, since he  _ did _ possess the knack for making Genji  _ think _ when he would much rather be acting or reacting. Zenyatta was serenely gentle-natured, even-tempered, and just peculiar enough in his own right that Hanzo suspected he would hear the words  _ my soul was nearly eaten by a horrible monstrosity from beyond the boundaries of the world _ and  _ there is something terrible going on in the desert and I wish to help the man who saved me in his efforts to stop it and I assure you that my reasons for doing this are perfectly rational and have nothing whatsoever to do with how much I want to spend the rest of my life admiring the way his pants cling to him fore and aft _ , nod sagely, and begin offering completely pragmatic advice on how to accomplish his goals. More than suspected it, he could practically see it happening in his mind’s eye, and a quick consultation with the household schedule showed him that Zenyatta was teaching a class in Advanced Meditation Modalities at the UNM annex for at least another hour.

 

The tea and soup went into thermoses, the thermoses went into his freshly emptied bookbag. He found a pair of gloves hiding in his catch-all drawer next to his university-issued mass transit pass and he pulled the heavier of his jackets out of the hall closet for the sky had continued to lower as he ate and, as he stepped out the door, the first snowflakes were beginning to drift out of the iron-gray clouds and the wind was beginning to rise. A chill curled down his spine that had little to do with the temperature, feeling the memory of sulfurous eyes on him in the endless dark of the desert night, and he hurried on his way in the hope that the fastest way to his brother’s lover’s assistance was their grandmother’s miso soup recipe and that they would both be home before true dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out but I hope the wait was worth it.
> 
> Also: I want to thank everyone who has commented and left kudos and who has otherwise offered their kind words of support here and on Tumblr -- your feedback has been incredibly heartening and I'm so very glad that so many people are enjoying this weird, quirky little fic of mine. You're the best.
> 
> Preliminary drafts and more random stuff of randomness can always be found here:
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/solivar

The UMN annex was four hoverbus transfers and one short stretch on the rapid pedestrian transit speedwalk which, this time at least, did not result in any form of grievous bodily harm, not even a bit of unscheduled nipple-surfing across the raked-stone-and-succulent-beds lawn at his point of exit. Given that his last trip out to the annex had resulted a) missing the exit, b) attempting to return to the exit by the expedient method of hopping over the lane separator, and c) being sent to the hospital via ambulance because having one foot going one direction and one foot going the other direction and each moving at roughly twice the average human walking speed was a recipe for tragedy, he considered this at least an unqualified success. In his own defence, the last time he traveled out to the annex was also his first, carrying Zenyatta’s forgotten lunch since he was the one who didn’t have any scheduled classes or studio time or anything resembling work that day, and had not expected what he found upon arrival. In the world of his childhood, buildings called “annexes” were either ancient, crumbling cinderblock-and-sheet-metal edifices that would probably exist until an earthquake strong enough to topple them came along  or else post-Crisis modular prefabs of recycled and poorly insulated plastics meant to be replaced by more permanent construction but which never seemed to rate high enough on anyone’s priority queue to quite get there. 

 

_ This _ annex, by way of cruel and distracting contrast, was a Pueblo Deco Revival architectural masterwork purpose designed and built as a showcase piece for the style, as well as to house the off-campus professional enrichment classrooms and offices for the chosen few among the faculty. His research, conducted while he was spending six weeks with his left leg in a full immobilization brace, suggested that being assigned space there was generally the result of a member of the faculty either dying or moving on and the survivors engaging in the sort of academic heft/staff seniority knife fights only spoken of in shellshocked whispers by TAs and adjuncts who’d had the misfortune of witnessing them first hand. That Tekhartha Zenyatta, known by all for his thoroughgoing gentleness and fundamentally mild nature, occupied a prime chunk of that real estate suggested that his publish-or-perish game was thoroughly on point or he knew where a substantial number of bodies were buried and probably both. His office was a second-floor corner, not quite as desirable as some spaces, significantly more desirable than others, gifted with more than adequate storage and sitting space as well as enormous windows in two of the four walls and a view of the city and the mountains beyond that could genuinely be described as a vista.

 

Zenyatta was sitting at his desk, silhouetted against said vista, when Hanzo arrived, having missed him in the classroom by a double handful of minutes, and knocked on the frame of the open door. He looked up and never was the praying mantis resemblance more acute than when the westering sun caught the shaved curve of his skull and the highlights in his hazel eyes as he blinked a slow and vaguely astonished blink at the apparition that appeared before him. Hanzo held up a thermos. “I have soup.”

 

Zenyatta smiled and his eyes glinted with unconcealed humor. “And this time emergency services were not involved in the delivery. Come in, my friend.” 

 

Hanzo stepped inside and closed the door behind him. By the time he turned around, Zenyatta had retrieved two bowls from the depths of his desk and shut down the holoscreens of its internal workstation. Hanzo sat, and poured, the soup still warm enough to steam, and a for a moment the sat together in companionable silence and drank.

 

“Ah.” Zenyatta finally said. “Grandmother Sumiko’s miso soup recipe. Never tell your brother this, but I am of the opinion that no one in the household makes it better than you.”

 

“You flatter me.” Hanzo replied, but couldn’t help the smile that grew across his face. “And I would never break my brother’s heart that way, I assure you.”

 

A warm chuckle. “I hope you do not mind me saying it, but you also have the look about you of a man who wishes to unburden himself without having to spend the next two hours talking his excitable, wildly overprotective little brother out of shipping him back to Japan tied up in a crate marked  _ live cargo, do not taunt _ .”

 

“You...are not even a little bit wrong about that,” Hanzo admitted, and set his bowl down. “I -- “

 

He opened his mouth to speak, and for a long, long, horrifyingly long moment, absolutely nothing came out. Zenyatta’s pale silver brows, always startling against his dark skin, rose questioningly as he finished drinking his soup and set the bowl aside. Hanzo closed his mouth, breathed deeply, exhaled, breathed deeply again, and found words absolutely failing to emerge from his word-making hole despite the ardent desire burning beneath is breastbone to expel the tale of every weird-ass thing that had happened to him over the last four days, unpleasant, pleasant, and enjoyment-neutral. His throat worked fruitlessly with the effort to produce them, his brain chased itself in fully coherent narrative circles, but the only thing to emerge from his throat was a thin, wheezy whine not entirely unlike the pitiful utterance of a woodwind whose reed was so hopelessly saturated with saliva it was utterly incapable of effective vibration. With a wordless moan of despair, he collapsed against Zenyatta’s desk and buried his head in his arms.

 

“I have the sense,” Zenyatta said, gently, “that this is not something you have done very often. Or perhaps at all. Ever.”

 

Hanzo found he could not raise his head from his arms and so he lifted a hand in a complex gesture he hoped Zenyatta would interpret as agreement.

 

“Would it, perhaps, be easier for you if I asked questions?” Again, oh so very gentle.

 

“...Maybe?” From the depths of his defensive stronghold, Hanzo managed to force out a response.

 

“Very well.” Zenyatta’s tone became, if anything, even more serene. “I understand that you intended to visit Shiprock. Was it all that you expected it to be?”

 

“...Yes.” He very much wished, at that moment, to wax rhapsodic at length, to utter self-condemnatory words for never having visited sooner, despite having the time to do so more than once over the years, to describe how it was impossible to fully appreciate the place in all its stark beauty without standing in the cool of its shadow, and settled for croaking into the crook of his arm, “I’ll show you the pictures when we get home.”

 

“Hanzo, my friend, are you comfortable with this? We can stop if -- “

 

“No,” Hanzo muttered, lifting his head enough to catch a glimpse of Zenyatta looking down at him, naked concern on his face. “No -- I wish to continue. Please.”

 

“As you wish.” Zenyatta leaned slightly closer, his hands folding together atop his desk in a fashion Hanzo was inclined to call mudra-ish. “I also understand that you intended to visit the Omnic graveyard in that area, as well. May I ask why? The two goals seem entirely divergent from one another.”

 

“Part of my Visual Thesis.” Hanzo admitted to the surface of Zenyatta’s desk. “A...comparison and contrast between natural forms of desolation -- the desert, particularly now that winter is approaching -- and the wreckage left behind by the collapse of modern civilization, the towns abandoned during the Crisis and never reoccupied, the scars left behind by hubris and war. I thought the graveyard, and the town closest to it, which was also called Shiprock, would make a striking example.”

 

“I tend to agree.” A little smile touched the corners of Zenyatta’s mouth. “I would very much enjoy seeing those photographs, I think, and to visit the your thesis exhibition next spring.”

 

“Iwillmakecertainmyadvisorhasyouonthelist.” He could feel all the blood evacuating his extremities and heading directly to his face and so he positioned his otherwise useless hands to hide it as much as possible. “The whole experience left me feeling...melancholy. There was -- there is -- an intrinsic sadness to the whole thing, even now, thinking of how much death and destruction could have been avoided, how much more could have been done in the aftermath, the appalling  _ waste _ of it all.” 

 

And now was the weird part. Where the emphatically Not Normal stuff began. He could feel the urge to beg Zenyatta’s forgiveness for wasting his time welling up in his throat and the even stronger urge to stand up and flee even if it meant risking death or dismemberment on a snow-slicked speedwalk taking up residence in his legs, pleading with him to retreat from what was certain to be a scene of pure humiliation.  _ You should really spare your brother’s boyfriend the necessity of calling the hospital and having you admitted for psychiatric evaluation -- that’s the sort of thing that can put a strain on even the best relationships, _ a little voice that  _ seemed _ to partake of rationality murmured in the back of his mind, seduction spiked with reproach because, really, what kind of asshole would do that to Zenyatta? He absolutely did not have to be forced to make that sort of judgment call and --

 

“And then where did you go?” Zenyatta’s voice, warm and smooth as oil, poured through the cracks in his internal monologue and caused how now-slippery thoughts to skid away like an unsteady but enthusiastic two year old on a particularly lubricious skating rink.

 

“Cerrillos,” Hanzo blurted out, before the voice of rationality could reassert itself. “Well -- eventually. This is where things become...strange. Very, very strange. I would humbly ask that you listen first and then, if you think me thoroughly irrational afterwards, we can discuss...options?”

 

Zenyatta’s hands lifted away from the table and took on a second, even more mudraish posture just below his chin. “Agreed. Though I should also tell you that, having lived and worked here for a number of years my standards for  _ strange _ are quite liberal.”

 

“My car’s GPS began malfunctioning even before I left the vicinity of the graveyard -- I believe I was technically still within Shiprock town limits.” He retrieved the second thermos and jiggled it gently; Zenyatta brought out two tea bowls this time, and he poured for them both. A few sips and he was fortified to continue. “It refused to hold the route I indicated. I had to reset it several times and it misdirected me all over the hills until I reached what used to be Route 14, where it showed me a course back to Santa Fe from the south. The  _ car itself _ was sputtering for miles and it finally died completely just after I made that turn.”

 

“I have heard of this sort of thing before from both students and colleagues.” Zenyatta informed him, meditatively. “Global positioning devices frankly refusing to function properly in certain regions south of the city, that is. The theories I have heard in relation to why this may be tend to extremes to say the least.”

 

“Oh?” Hanzo asked, somewhat more warily than he liked.

 

A certain mischievous sparkle came into Zenyatta’s eyes. “The most reasonable suggest some form of localized, persistent geomagnetic disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere, though how such a thing could both exist and completely defy conventional forms of detection is a debate all by itself. Some of the others...well. Roswell  _ is _ only two hundred miles away, and well within the observed radius of GPS disturbances.”

 

“Roswell?” Hanzo asked, blankly this time.

 

The mischievous sparkle was now a mischievous  _ gleam _ . “Aliens, my friend. Visitors from another world. One of my students is involved in the production of a journal of amateur UFOlogy and swears with a great deal of passionate conviction that the United States government has been covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life since a vehicle not of this world crashed in Roswell in the late 1940s.”

 

“I...believe I read about that at some point.” Hanzo leaned back in his chair. “A crashed weather balloon?”

 

“A crashed nuclear test observation balloon that spawned thousands of conspiracy theories, some of them more plausible than others.” He shook his head slightly. “But I agreed to listen first. Please...continue.”

 

“Yes. Uhm.” And now came the Really Incredibly Strange Parts and before his rational mind could start whispering helpful advice, he pushed himself all the way up into a normal sitting position, gripped the armrests of his chair and said, “I think there were coyotes.  _ Actual _ real, living coyotes. At least one. When the car died, it was almost dark -- the road I was on barely existed on the GPS and from what I could see it wasn’t traveled regularly at all. My cell had no reception, not even the emergency contact signal. I knew that waiting wasn’t really an option, so I gathered my things and began walking north along Route 14. I saw their eyes from a distance at the edge of my light and for at least a few hours, I was convinced I was going to be eaten.”

 

A smile curled Zenyatta’s mouth, but he mercifully said nothing.

 

“I reached Cerrillos -- I want to say near midnight? I lost track of time while I was walking. It was cold, I was exhausted, and at first I didn’t realize I was looking at real lights, an occupied building. The ranger’s...station, I should probably say, but it was more like just a house? I think he’s lived there a long time, is what I’m saying. He took me in and I sort of passed out on his couch and the next morning he gave me breakfast and can I just say that if you and he got into a gently soothing smile contest,  _ I am legitimately unsure who would win? _ He’s just so -- “ Hanzo’s hands, he realized with dawning horror, had released their grip on the armrests through no conscious direction of his own and started talking for themselves; he hastily stuffed them under his thighs. “ _ Anyway _ , the next day he took me to my car to see if anything could be done for it and there was...something...more than one something...not a coyote...lurking around it. Nearby. We heard them first -- they howled, like a pack of animals communicating with one another.” He found he could recall that hideous, unearthly sound with horripilating intensity, a shudder running the length of his body as he did so, and Zenyatta’s sympathetic listening face took on a hint of genuine alarm. “Jesse -- that’s the ranger’s name, Jesse McCree -- told me to get back into our vehicle and as we were driving away there was  _ something else _ , something louder and closer and I --”

 

The sensation that gripped him now was less a shudder than a convulsion as, for an instant, he nearly remembered what he saw -- the outline, the contour, the texture, the stomach-churning awareness that none of those things were born of any sane world, or even the one they both now occupied, and he deeply regretted everything he’d eaten thus far that day. He clamped his jaw and his eyes shut and swallowed hard and, as he did so, a pair of warm hands cradled his face. At a vast distance, he heard Zenyatta saying his name. With an almost superhuman effort, he forced his eyes to open and ground out, “I  _ saw _ it. Something unnatural. It saw me, too, and it tried -- “

 

“It tried to devour your soul.” Zenyatta finished it for him.

 

“How -- ?” Hanzo croaked, not quite certain how many possible permutations of that question he actually meant, but he knew it was more than one.

 

“Did I know?” The kindly smile had a slightly sad tinge to it. “I sensed the change in you when you returned home last night, but I wasn’t certain how or when to approach you about it. Your spirit has  _ always _ been wounded, for as long as I have known you, but this is...more. Not so deep nor so old but more immediately serious. Your soul was severed from your flesh?”

 

“Yes,” Hanzo croaked again, his stomach still seriously considering rebellion and his mind now beginning to get in on the uncivilized revolution action. “ _ How _ \-- ?”

 

“The ranger saved you? He must have, he was the only one close enough to do so. How...unusual.” Zenyatta’s eyes gleamed again, almost with a light of their own, golden welling up from beneath gray and green. “And he protects you still. I can see his aegis wrapped around you like a cloak of crimson and gold, holding you while you heal, hiding you from...the thing that saw you.”

 

“Really?” It came out sounding horribly, pathetically needy and he tried to cringe away, but Zenyatta refused to relinquish his hold.

 

“Yes.” The smile that curved his lips held more than a trace of impishness; Hanzo found that bizarrely comforting. “I would like to meet this ranger of yours. Other professional craftworkers are so hard to find outside the specialized academic sphere, and  _ those _ assholes would never dirty their hands with  _ actually rescuing _ someone.”

 

“I’d like to see him again too,” It was nothing more or less than utter honesty and it fell out of his mouth before he could stop it.

 

“Excellent. We shall have to make a day of it.” Gently. “Can you stand? Walk?”

 

Hanzo tested his legs and found his knees wobbly but not so much he wouldn’t risk getting out of the chair. “I think?”

 

“Good, because I am not certain I could carry you.” Zenyatta leaned back, resting on the edge of his desk. “I realize this has been several sorts of shock to you, my friend. I will do what I can to help ameliorate that, and assist in your recovery however I am able.”

 

“He gave me a medicine. A kind of tea? It’s supposed to help.” Hanzo took a deep breath, forced his racing thoughts to slow, and then to organize themselves into at least one coherent utterance. “Professional craftworkers?”

 

“A term of relatively modern provenance, I must admit.” Zenyatta reached out and grasped his hand gently. “I understand that you were, in essence, studying to be part of our kindred order once.”

 

Hanzo swallowed with some difficulty, his own grip involuntarily tightening. “ _ Oh. _ ”

 

“Yes.” He glanced out the western window at the sunset beginning to blossom in scarlet glory over the city. “We should go home -- it’s my night to cook, after all. If it is not objectionable to you, I would like to examine the medicine you were given?”

 

“Of course.” Hanzo replied, numbly, feeling as he did so the ache of that older wound again, for the first time in ages. “Genji. Did he...did he  _ tell _ you what…”

 

“No.” Zenyatta’s smile softened into something close to sorrow again. “Only that you left your path for reasons of your own. We may discuss that also, if you wish.”

 

“No.” It came out more curtly than he wished and he squeezed Zenyatta’s hand in apology. “No -- I...do not wish to...visit that again. Not right now.”  _ Never _ , whispered that silent ache, and he pushed himself slowly to his feet. “I...would like to be home before dark, if we could.”

 

“Of course.”

 

*

 

The best part about Zenyatta cooking was that  _ Zenyatta actually cooked _ . Rather than engaging in a forty-odd-minute long debate among five individuals with wildly divergent tastes that would end in an obscenely expensive take-out order, he very simply ignored the divergent tastes and made something that everyone would invariably sit down to eat and subsequently enjoy. Hanzo himself hadn’t quite mastered that art but considered himself learning at the knee of the master every time he was asked to assist and thus he had no objection to being handed a knife and a cutting board almost as soon as they arrived home. He sat and cut carrots into rounds while Zenyatta retrieved the containers of marinating chicken (for the meat-eaters) and marinating tofu (for the non-meat-eaters) from the refrigerator and set them out to reach room temperature; he chopped garlic and minced fresh ginger while Zenyatta toasted a few handfuls of shelled peanuts and set them aside to cool; he diced onion while Zenyatta heated the oil in both their large skillets and added aromatic spices that perfumed the air. The tension bled from him as they worked, Zenyatta adding half the onion to each pan, and he rose to do what dishes he could as basmati rice and water went into the cooker. Moment by moment the soothing rituals of the kitchen worked their magic on him and he found the words flowing out.

 

“There was something else -- something I didn’t tell you at the office. Once when I was at the ranger’s house and when I returned home last night, I...traveled outside my body.” Saying it aloud had the effect of solidifying the reality of it in his own mind  _ and _ silencing the almost-continuous mutters of reason in the back of his skull that were advocating voluntarily committing himself. “Well. All right. I  _ know _ I did it at the ranger’s house. Last night might have been an extraordinarily vivid and detailed dream, but I doubt it sincerely.”

 

Zenyatta carefully added the chicken and its marinade to one of the pans and gave it a few quick stirs. “That does not entirely surprise me. Your soul’s attachment to its flesh is attenuated at the moment, likely moreso when you sleep.”

 

“The ranger suggested as much -- the medicine is supposed to help with that, I think. It made me so tired when I took it last night I barely made it up the stairs.” He accepted the container Zenyatta handed to him and made it clean. “I...may have witnessed a conversation I probably should not have heard.”

 

“Oh?” Zenyatta glanced at him, sidelong, and repeated his process with the second container, tone and manner perfectly neutral.

 

“When I was...sleepwalking...last night. Possibly this morning. Maybe both?  _ Anyway, _ ” Hanzo scrubbed savagely at the second container for a moment, “I went back to his house -- I am not entirely certain why -- but I felt as though I woke there, on the couch. His parents were waiting for him, but they did not seem to be aware of my presence, and when he returned home he was not aware of it, either. They discussed a number of topics that were somewhat outside my realm of experience -- things I would appreciate your assistance in researching, if you would be amenable to doing so?”

 

“Of course. I have always been of the opinion that ignorance is not an outstandingly effective shield.” The very faintest hint of a smile as he added rice and carrots and ginger and peanuts to a third pan. “Particularly when dealing with the naturally curious artistic types. Would you mind setting the table and summoning the others? We’ll be ready to eat in a few minutes.”

 

Everyone in the house had their favorite plate, glass, set of silverware, and chair, no single piece of it matching any other piece, reflective of the fact that they all brought at least a handful of household goods when they moved in together. The blender/food processor belonged to Hana -- she used it to produce gallons of fruity homemade energy smoothies containing approximately four times the amount of caffeine permitted in commercially salable beverages which she fed to the rest of the game design faculty and students on a fairly regular basis, particularly in the vicinity of midterms and finals. In fact, her entire friendship with Genji came about as a result of his raging addiction to the Random Mystery Fruit variety of the same and his invitation to move in with them in order to shorten the supply chain. Lucio brought the living room sound system, which replaced the fairly dinky speakers that came with their holotank and turned the entire room into a nearly hallucinatory sensory experience when it was running full-tilt, a circumstance usually reserved for family game nights and movie marathon weekends when the nearest neighbors were away, because otherwise someone would be forced to continue the ongoing battle of the passive-aggressive complaints to their landlord, who had absolutely no fucks to give so long as they paid the rent on time and didn’t actually violate any local sound-related ordinances. From childhood on, Genji had owned every game system known to man and some that were entirely experimental products of the family’s active immersion entertainment products division -- he’d bought them all again, once he’d come to the United States, and still received regular care packages from AIE of tech and games that needed thorough testing. Zenyatta had actually brought the majority of the common-use furniture, including the kitchen table and chairs and the living room set, all of which had a rather distinct character of their own, and that character was probably the offspring of an aromatherapist, a medical cannabis dispensary, and a polyamorous hippie commune.

 

Hanzo supplied the pots and pans, because man in general and he in specific couldn’t live on delivery alone. 

 

The sounds drifting down the stairs told him the rest of the household was, indeed, home and also that merely calling up to them was unlikely to jar them from their pursuits. Instead, he found his tablet, queued up the standard dinner summons, and deployed it. Within seconds, the dulcet tones precision sound-engineered to resemble a composite of literally all their mothers echoed through the house. “ _ Make yourselves presentable, you heathens, there’s food on the table!” _

 

Then he went back into the kitchen to help Zenyatta transfer dinner from the stove to the table and set out everyone’s favorite drinks.

 

“I  _ still _ don’t think our mother would use the word ‘heathens,’” Genji informed him, accepting the glass of lemonade Hanzo handed to him.

 

“No, but she certainly would have demanded that we make ourselves presentable.” Hanzo replied, pouring his way around the table to his own seat.

 

“Heathens is the least thing my mother would call this group.” Lucio leaned against the kitchen doorframe, looking for all the world as though it were the only thing holding him up. “But I’m pretty sure she’d mean it as a compliment.”

 

“What  _ happened _ to you?” Hanzo asked, appalled, before his better judgment or self-preservation instincts could successfully intervene.

 

“I’m pretty sure  _ your _ story’s more interesting than mine when it comes to that.” Lucio grinned, tired but puckish, and came to the table. “Sorry I missed you when you got back home yesterday, Hanzo -- I’ve been pulling double duty on this group project that’s due in a couple weeks. The classmate I was supposed to partner with went home to visit her folks in Amarillo last month and then dropped off the face of the Earth. Didn’t come back, didn’t withdraw, didn’t answer calls or email or anything. The prof only just gave us leave to reallocate her part of the project last week.”

 

“Oh, man, that sucks. Wait. Wasn’t your partner Cora Hernandez?” Hana materialized in her chair between one moment and the next. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this but...a member of my project team does her work study in the campus security office and her parents have been calling almost non-stop. Texas State PD, too. Apparently she never actually made it back home -- they found her car somewhere south of here, way south, like way into the coyotes-and-batshit-survivalists territory. No offense to your new boyfriend, Hanzo.”

 

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Hanzo replied, reflexively, even as all the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “And he’s also not a batshit survivalist so your apology is doubly unnecessary. Do you know where, exactly, her car was found?”

 

“I wanna say, like, near Alamogordo?  _ South. _ ” Hana shook her head. “I feel bad for her family, no matter what.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”

 

“Morbid curiosity,” Hanzo replied and took his seat, thoughts racing.

 

Alamogordo was  _ significantly _ further south, he knew that much, well inside the territory that had been depopulated by evacuation and violence during the Omnic Crisis and never fully rehabilitated for any number of reasons, most of them pragmatically economic in nature. He wished that he dared pull out his tablet at the table and start consulting maps but that would have led to any number of awkward questions that he really did not want to answer at that moment, not with Genji already giving him the iridescently brilliant suspicious side-eye and Zenyatta regarding him with only barely disguised concern. He smiled comfortingly at them both, fooled neither, and attended to dinner and the lighter conversation that followed as best he could, with his mind running in a rapidly expanding series of concentric circles that kept coming back to  _ someone else from my school VANISHED COMPLETELY INTO THE DESERT in the last month _ and  _ is this the sort of thing I should tell Jesse about or am I actually such a complete asshole that I would use the disappearance of an innocent woman as an excuse to call my crush? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW. _

 

It was, according to the household chores schedule, his night to do dishes but, since he helped make dinner, Zenyatta waved him off and instead snared Genji in seductive toils of help-me-and-we-can-make-out-against-the-counter, from which they all fled in various degrees of trauma. Well, okay,  _ he _ was traumatized, because no amount of walking on Genji engaged in libidinous acts with a succession of attractive partners while they were both still teenagers had successfully immunized him against the horror of seeing his baby brother suck face with anyone, ever. On the other hand, Zenyatta’s heroic sacrifice allowed him the time to book it upstairs, get in his room, lock the door, brace his desk chair under the doorknob, and begin Researching before Genji could unload any degree of Distracting Brotherly Concern in his direction.

 

Cora Hernandez was, in fact, officially missing -- her family was offering a substantial reward for information on her whereabouts, the state police and highway patrol in New Mexico were actively searching for leads and requesting the assistance of the public. The pictures provided displayed a lovely young woman with a perfectly heart-shaped face, enormous dark eyes, and a sweet smile, who wore her long, straight black hair in a braid or a ponytail. She was an undergraduate student at the University of Art and Design, a fact that jolted him sharply, and the last time anyone saw her was the afternoon of September 11th when she said goodbye to her roommate and set out for home to attend her mother’s birthday celebration that weekend. Her car was found October 3rd in the parking lot of the Lincoln National Forest Visitor Center by a ranger occupying one of the park’s still-manned structures and who reported the discovery to the state police.

So -- almost, in fact, to Alamogordo, one of the modern ghost towns, ghost cities in this case, left behind by the Omnic Crisis, evacuated and never formally reincorporated afterwards as the course of economic redevelopment trended steadily away. People still lived there, of course, individuals and families that trickled back after the war was over despite the formal aprobrium of governments state, local, and Federal, a refusal to restore basic services, and a rather dim view of the returnees’ stubborn refusal just to accept a generous buyout offer for their property and go elsewhere. The returnees were fortunate inasmuch as most of what they’d left behind was still there when they went back for it -- much of Albuquerque had been reduced to rubble and the ruins were a regularly patrolled no-go zone -- and what they couldn’t grow, manufacture, scavenge, or cobble together for themselves, they could trade for with the residents of the Mescalero Apache Reservation just to the north and El Paso to the south. It had been twenty years and both the state and Federal governments tended in the direction of ignoring those largely self-sufficient little communities unless a crime was committed that led directly toward them, at which point the authorities would land on the tight-knit family enclaves or scattered individual homesteads with both feet, roust everyone out, and occasionally level everything to the ground. Otherwise, they were permitted to exist largely unmolested thanks very much to a carefully cultivated reputation as batshit survivalists who shot first and asked questions later.

 

The residents of the unincorporated freehold of Alamogordo had, therefore, made a significant show of assisting in the search for Cora Hernandez once her car was found, as had the Mescalero Apache Tribal Council, though thus far no trace of her had turned up. Her purse, containing her credit cards and student identification, was still in the car, clearly visible on the passenger seat. The car itself had been towed back to Santa Fe and impounded, but a forensic examination had revealed no signs of a struggle or any other sort of foul play, the only prints on the steering wheel, interior, and exterior surfaces being hers. It took six articles on the topic to uncover the fact that the vehicle’s electrical system was dead when it was found, primary and secondary antigrav batteries drained dry, navigation system fried crispy. Much more obvious: that the local residents interviewed had their doubts that she would be found at all, much less alive, with all the requisite “it’s wild territory” and “the weather at this time of year works against us” and, at least to his admittedly biased ear, a certain amount of subliminal “she was probably eaten by a monster from beyond reality, I feel so badly for her mother right now.” Okay, he was probably imagining that but...she had driven a full two hundred miles in a direction, if not precisely opposite her destination, close enough to opposite for the decimal places not to matter. He knew that feeling disturbingly well.

 

The fact that the car was found by a ranger in all likelihood meant Jesse already knew more about the situation than he, as an uninvolved civilian, could ever possibly uncover and he came to peace with the notion that he was  _ exactly _ the sort of asshole who’d use this situation as an excuse to call his crush.

 

Instead of calling, or writing because writing would entail looking at his email which would naturally devolve into responding to email because his goddamned sense of responsibility demanded it, he opened up GeoMaps, his phone’s internal GPS functions, and began the process of tracing his own route as best he could. For a moment, after he interfaced the two and watched the route construct itself according to the GPS’ cache, he thought the data must have been corrupted somehow -- nothing about the contorted cat’s cradle of the return trip made sense. He did not recall making even half the turns his phone insisted he made, switchbacking across barely marked roads in the hills and desert above Route 40 and the Albuquerque Exclusion Zone as though his vehicle were iron filings being dragged back and forth between two magnets before finally coming to a halt just south of Cerrillos, where it finally broke down. On impulse, he manually added a second set of variables: Santa Fe to Alamogordo and asked the program to calculate the most direct route. It was, pragmatically speaking, almost a straight line, one that bypassed Cerrillos to the east, provided that Cora Hernandez had lost her way immediately upon leaving the city -- which was not necessarily the case. The courses as logically plotted did not intersect but he saved the map, anyway, for reference purposes at the very least, and shut down the program.

 

He was slightly startled to see that it was after ten -- no one had come knocking after dinner chores were done and he had lost track of time completely, he’d forgotten that he was going to show Zenyatta the pictures from his trip, and now he felt like a total ass _ hat _ as well as an ass _ hole. _ And he had also managed to not pay a single bit of attention to any aspect of his real life that would have an immediate impact on his future, a fact underscored by the number of urgent!red!exclamation!points! in his mailbox once he finally glanced at it. Admittedly, most of them were from one person -- his thesis advisor -- and given Dr. Saddind-Maas had the tendency to send eight emails where two would do and considered everything equally urgent, the odds were pretty good that they were mostly sympathy. Except for the one about making certain he cancelled his studio space reservation if he wasn’t going to use it (he was, he had to, being sent back to his ordinary life for his own protection wouldn’t matter much if he never did anything normal again) and reminding him of their scheduled meeting on Friday. He found his alarm clock in the waste basket -- he had a vague memory of doing it violence and was pleased to discover that it hadn’t been mortally wounded when he pulled it out of the wall. He reset the time and the alarm and, just to be safe, he set a secondary alarm on his phone and set it on his dresser, out of easy reach in the event of another strange night that ended in throwing things.

 

Hana was asleep on the living room couch with a controller still in hand when he went downstairs which meant, among other things, that she was probably out of energy drink ingredients and he made a note on his tablet to ask her what she needed. He also tucked a throw blanket around her that smelled rather noticeably of patchouli and lavender, put the controller back on the charging dock, turned off the holotank, and made sure the front door was locked and the security system armed. Someone had already refilled the teakettle and so he simply turned on the heat beneath it, dug the little tea-for-one set he’d gotten on a whim and never really used out of the cabinet, and fetched the medicine box, now with a yellow post-it sticky attached.

 

_ A whole teaspoon may be slightly too much for your weight. Try one half and if you have another out of body experience tonight, let me know. We may need to consult the herbalist for alternative dosing or blends. - Z. _

 

Hanzo paused, closed his eyes, reminded himself firmly that  _ tomorrow was going to be a completely fucking normal day _ , measured a half-teaspoon of the tea, set the egg timer for three minutes, and allowed it to steep for exactly that long. One spoonful of honey. Stirred. Drank. Swore at himself because he’d gotten out the tea-for-one thing so he could take it upstairs and drink it there, a fact he had totally forgotten between one minute and the next. Piled all the tea things in the sink to wash in the morning. The somnolent tug of the medicine seemed less intense than it had, which only made sense, and he made it back to his room before his limbs started to feel even the slightest trace of heaviness, and made it into his pyjamas before his head got into the act. Sleep closed its arms around him almost before his head touched the pillow.

 

*

 

The alarm went off at 5:45 am and, this time, Hanzo reached over and thumbed it off, sat up, stretched, turned on his bedside lamp, and screamed.

 

The silence afterward was fragile and broken by a shout from the floor below. “ _ Hanzo! _ ”

 

Through the ringing in his ears, he heard footsteps -- more than one set of footsteps -- on the stairs, and someone knocking on his door. “Hanzo? Are you okay?”

 

Lucio, who shared the third floor with him, of course got there first. He wanted to say something, but the words were caught in his throat, and before he could force them out, the door flew open and Genji, Zenyatta, and Lucio all poured inside, Hana bringing up the rear with one of Lucio’s hockey sticks in hand. 

 

“ _ Aniki, _ ” Genji crawled onto the bed next to him, back plastered against the wall, and grabbed his shoulder. “Are you -- “

 

“Oh, holy --  _ what _ is  _ that? _ ” Lucio sounded nearly as appalled as Hanzo felt; Genji turned and looked and his grip tightened nearly to the point of pain.

 

Hanzo’s room was longer than it was wide, having once been something closer to a storage space than a living one, and he had structed it accordingly. His desk sat just beneath the single window at the far end, with the large standing cabinet he used to store his art supplies and the hanging folders for his assorted portfolios next to it. His bedside table and bed were set hard against the north wall and he usually ended up sleeping with his back against it for reasons he could not quite explain even to himself. Under ordinary circumstances, the inexpensive Swedish prefab chest of drawers that served to store his clothing in lieu of an actual closet sat directly opposite, with a lane between them. At the moment, it was pushed flush with his desk, the supplies closet sat both askew on its base and open, and the open space of previously eggshell white wall between was covered with what happened when sensitive artistic types lost their fucking minds and started finger painting the contents of their damaged psyches all over the real estate. Clearly, obviously fingerpainting because the paint in question was lodged under his nails, dried all over his skin to the elbow, the sheets, the blankets, and his mind was absolutely refusing to focus for longer than a second or two on what he’d drawn, the hideous contorted mass of it stretched across all of the wall and part of the ceiling, and he absolutely could not imagine how he’d managed some of that texture work with undiluted tube watercolors. Or maybe he had diluted them somehow, though he didn’t want to think too deeply on the mechanics of that, either, and Genji was whispering fiercely in his ear in Japanese, Zenyatta was talking quietly with Hana and Lucio, and, from downstairs, the doorbell rang.

 

“Someone should get that,” Hanzo whispered, and let his head fall back against the wall behind him.

 

“...I’ll get it.” Hana, unlike the rest of them, was in actual clothes and at least nominally armed; she descended the stairs sounding very much as though she expected to have to use that hockey stick for activities man never intended.

“Hanzo, please.” Genji’s voice was tight with fear. “ _ What happened? _ ”

 

“I don’t know?” Hanzo replied, helplessly. His eyes felt as though they’d been popped out of his skull, rolled in a combination of gravel and tiny slivers of glass, then shoved back in without any particular care for proper orientation; his arms and shoulders and upper back ached as though he’d been exercising unceasingly for hours; he felt, between the ears, more completely and utterly rested than he’d felt in days but the last thing he remembered was falling face-first into his pillow, curling into his mattress. “I...did this, I must have done this but I don’t -- I  _ can’t remember _ \-- I -- “

 

“I am not certain this is an improvement over involuntary astral projection.” Zenyatta muttered, casting a glance at the wall, a little shudder traveling all the way down his long body; Hanzo found his unease weirdly, perversely comforting. 

 

“ _ What? _ ” Lucio and Genji asked, more or less simultaneously.

 

Hanzo glanced a question at Zenyatta, who shook his head slightly. “It’s...Okay. The trip out to the desert was really, really -- I didn’t want to tell you right away because I  _ knew _ you’d freak out -- “

 

“I fucking  _ knew _ you didn’t just break down.” Genji growled at him. “For fuck’s sake, Hanzo,  _ there is literally nothing you can’t tell me. _ ”

 

Hanzo took a deep, calming breath and released it. “The car actually did break down. I was also...attacked...sort of...by something that looked...a little like  _ that. _ ” He nodded in the direction of the wall. “It yanked my soul out of my body and was probably trying to eat it. The ranger saved me and put my soul back where it should be and sent me home with some kind of protection around me and medicine to help me recover but I traveled out of my body the night before last and now….” He gestured at the wall again. “ _ Yeah _ .”

 

The complex series of expressions that crossed Genji’s face at this recitation was a terrible wonder to behold. “Explain to me, using small words and diagrams, why the fuck you shouldn’t be on a plane back to Japan right now?”

 

“Because I would rather die than go back and you, my loving brother, know that?” Hanzo replied sweetly.

 

“That’s actually a pretty good reason, Gen.” Lucio pointed out with what Hanzo considered fairly admirable calm, given the circumstances.

“You’re taking this well,” Hanzo remarked, ignoring his brother’s sputtered objections to both their statements.

 

“Man, I’ve been playing the music scene in this city for  _ years. _ ” Lucio shook his head. “You hear some stuff. Get far enough beyond the city limits and you  _ see _ some stuff. Weird-ass stuff. Also, Zen and Gen and I have kinda had some mutual hallucinatory experiences together and -- “

 

“Annnnnnnnnnd all right we will solve this problem right here and leave the family out of it _. _ ” Genji gesticulated in an extremely undignified manner and Hanzo found himself swallowing a slightly hysterical laugh and swallowing slightly more when his brother turned back to him, eyes unnaturally bright. “ _ You almost died. _ ”

 

Hanzo closed his eyes. “I’m -- “

 

“If you say ‘I’m fine,’ you’re going to force me to point at that wall. As a matter of fact, let’s -- “

 

Hanzo’s phone rang, the sound distinctly muffled by its position face-down underneath the clothes chest. All four of them went for it simultaneously; Zenyatta won, by virtue of having the longest arms, and handed it to him.

 

The call was from Hana. “...Hello?”

 

“Uhm.” Hana sounded either deeply traumatized or deeply amused and possibly both. “Your rental car’s back.” Her voice dropped. “I maaaaaaaaaaay have mentioned that something weird’s going on and the, uh, mechanic down here asked to talk to you. I’m turning on video chat -- “ 

 

Hanzo pulled the phone away from his ear, Genji and Lucio both gathering close as he did so, the images on the screen a jumble as she handed the phone to someone else. In the wan light of morning, Hanzo received the impression of an almost comically long face, a maniacally cheerful grin, and hair that gave the impression of being just slightly on fire. “Good mornin’, Mr. Shimada. You are -- “ the image blurred again and the newcomer came up with a piece of lined paper, much crumpled. “Hanzo Shimada, right?”

 

“I am.” Hanzo replied, feeling the world tilting ever so slightly sideways.

 

“Oh, good. Good. I got the keys to your car down here -- everything oughta be in order, right down to the new car smell, rental agency won’t be able to tell the difference, on my honor.” He practically  _ twinkled _ with good cheer so infectious it pulled an involuntary smile onto Hanzo’s face. “Now, the chippie -- “

 

“ _ Hey!” _ Hana snapped, somewhere off camera.

 

“Sorry, chippie, but I didn’t catch your name.” He sounded legitimately contrite. “ _ Anyway _ , yer friend told me something’s pear-shaped upstairs. Can I take a look at it?”

 

“You -- you’re -- “ Hanzo took a deep, calming breath, forced his thoughts to settle, and asked, “You’re a...craftworker?”

 

“Of a kind. C’mon, lemme see. If nothing else I can tell you if -- “

 

Before Hanzo could think better of it, he flipped the camera view around and aimed it at the wall.

 

“--YEAH, OKAY, THAT’S -- YES, THANK YOU. WARN A MAN NEXT TIME, WOULDJA?” 

 

He flipped the camera around again. “My apologies.”

 

The newcomer was blinking as though he were trying to banish a particularly unpleasant afterimage. “S’all right but --trust me when I tell ya that’s not summat you wanna mess with on your own, okay? In fact, you should probably all get outta there and, uh, maybe burn it down?”

 

“It’s a rental.” Hanzo replied, reflexively, and felt his world tilt a few more degrees.

 

“Then call Jess and let  _ him _ burn it down, I’m pretty sure he could get it smoothed over all official and governmental and such. Oh. And I’m s’posed to tell you that you’re not to worry about a bill or anything, because it’s covered.” That long face rearranged itself into an actually worried look. “But, seriously, call Jess as soon as you can and get outta there in the meantime. For your own safety, mate, trust me.”

 

“I will do that. Thank you, Mister…?” 

 

“Fawkes. Jamie Fawkes. The chippie -- OW -- your friend down here has my card. For all your mechanical needs.” He ended the call before Hanzo could say anything else.

 

“Jess?” Genji asked, evenly.

 

“The ranger.” Hanzo replied, wishing he had it in him to push the world back into alignment by sheer force of will. “His name is Jesse. Jesse McCree.”

 

“Craftworker?” Lucio asked, perplexed.

 

“That explanation is far longer.” Zenyatta interjected. “And considerably more complicated. In any case...I suggest we take Mr. Fawkes’ advice and -- “

 

“Burn down the house?” Hana asked from the door, hockey stick still slung over her shoulder. “I really need to know how you met that guy. Those guys. There were two. A big guy and an  _ even bigger _ guy. Explanations for a lot of things are totally in order here, is what I’m saying.”

 

“-- I was about to suggest that we all get dressed and go for breakfast.” Zenyatta continued peacefully. “And contact the ranger.”

 

Hanzo allowed his head to thud back against the wall again. “And to think I expected today to be  _ normal. _ ” 

  
  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the length of time between updates -- April ambushed me with unexpected personal health issues, including an unscheduled but thankfully brief hospitalization. Remember, everybody: brush your teeth, floss after every meal, and when you break a molar get it taken care of right away because dental abscess-related sepsis has a 50% mortality rate and even if it doesn't kill you it will still make you feel like crap for a good long while.
> 
> I would like to thank everyone for their patience, and also everyone who cheered me on when writing was the very last thing I wanted to do this month, and hopefully I'll now be able to get back into my writing groove going forward.
> 
> Ghost Stories has fanart! From the delightful Zim!: http://tinyturtletimtim.tumblr.com/post/159764926888/zimmarshmallow-so-ive-been-reading-the-crap-out
> 
> http://tinyturtletimtim.tumblr.com/post/159774936573/aaaand-i-went-and-did-more

Sweetwater’s Cafe and Dim Sum Palace was what happened when the owner of the hip young southwestern fusion cuisine cafe closest to the UNM main campus met the owner of the hip young Chinese small plates restaurant closest to the UNM main campus and, rather than engage in an increasingly rancorous culinary battle for the spare cash of every student in walking distance, they instead fell wildly in love and shortly thereafter into scrumptious and wholesome partnership. Strategically located catty-corner to the main campus residence halls, the post-merger restaurant became  _ the _ place for broke ass college students attempting to top-load on calories for the day to turn up as soon as the doors opened, eat from carts pushed around three stories of public-to-semi-private dining space by an army of cheerful abuelitas for two hours straight, and still make a 9:30 lecture with time to spare. The joint Shimada-Tekhartha-Song-Correia household dined there frequently enough that the host waved them through despite the fact that Hanzo still looked like he had just committed a phthalo green and phthalocyanine blue shaded murder even after a thorough scrubbing. Fortunately, their usual table, a booth in the back corner of the semi-private floor, was unoccupied and he rather swiftly found himself tucked firmly between Genji on one side and Zenyatta on the other, with Lucio and Hana standing guard on the outside ends of the U-shaped seat. Hana had, in fact, only parted with her adopted hockey stick with extreme reluctance.

 

“Is it too early to start drinking?” Hana asked brightly. “Because, between you and me, I have a feeling that today is going to be the sort of thing that demands Mimosas. Lots of Mimosas. And possibly a whole bottle of tequila before it’s all over.”

 

“Yes,” said Hanzo and Zenyatta, more or less simultaneously and in reasonably identical disapproving tones, to their mutual surprise.

 

“You two aren’t going to be a single bit of fun about any of this, are you? Okay,  _ fine. _ ” And when the drinks cart came around, she settled for a spiced hot chocolate and waited patiently for everyone else to adulterate their tea or coffee before demanding, “All right. Spill it. I want to know in excruciating detail why our security deposit probably just went down the toilet.”

 

Hanzo inhaled the steam rising off his cup of tea, took a fortifying sip, organized his thoughts, and began to speak, pausing only when the food carts stopped next to their table. He told them about the trip itself, the breakdown, the walk through the desert, the ranger and their drive back to the car the next morning, and precisely how everything had gone horribly, hideously wrong from that point forward. He even copped to talking to Zenyatta first, which earned them both a half-startled, half-hurt look from Genji. When he finished, the table was covered in half-empty plates of huevos rancheros, honey-coated sopaipillas, carne adovada burritos, pork xiao long bao, sesame buns, and a crock of hot and sour soup. He helped himself to a little bit of everything while the others digested what he told them.

 

“So...what you’re saying is…” Hana said in the tone of one musing idly aloud, “...your smoking hot park ranger has one hot vampire dad and one terrifying smog monster dad but, nonetheless,  _ he has two dads _ , which means he won’t find it completely traumatic if you call him up and ask him if he wants to go get some hot chocolate and pumpkin empanadas once all this is over?”

 

“Really?  _ That _ was your takeaway from his story?” Lucio asked.

 

“It was the takeaway that doesn’t make me want to run screaming back to Korea.” Hana replied, sweetly.

 

“Okay, there  _ is _ that.” Lucio turned and leveled a deadly serious look at him, brown eyes intensely earnest. “Han, I love you man, you know that, right? So you know this is coming from a place of love when I say you  _ could not _ be more obviously thirsty for this dude if you had a holoscreen floating over your head announcing in foot-tall flashing letters  _ I am thirsty for Ranger Jesse McCree. _ Seriously, ask him out. The worst he can do is say he’s not interested.” 

 

Hanzo buried his face in his soup bowl in an effort to disguise the fact that all the blood was rushing into his head with such violence he could hear it roaring in his ears like a gale-force wind. On one side, he could  _ feel _ Zenyatta heroically controlling the urge to add his encouragement to the chorus; on the other, he suspected that Genji was restraining something considerably less supportive.

 

“Show of hands,” Genji asked, his tone positively  _ glacial _ with the self-control it was taking him not to have a screaming freakout in the middle of breakfast, “Who thinks  _ my brother _ being stalked by a  _ soul-eating monstrosity from beyond reality as we know it _ is completely unacceptable and something we should all be working to change  _ right now? _ ”

 

Four hands went up; Hanzo abstained, since he felt his opinion on the matter should be fairly self-evident.

 

“Seriously, though.” Hana reached over and snagged a sopapilla. “I joke because otherwise I’d be rocking back and forth in a corner gibbering right now because, really, that was kinda the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen and my Dad collects vintage Junji Ito manga so I know from creepy.”

 

“I gotta agree with Hana on that one.” Lucio continued to look intensely earnest. “I get why you tried to keep us out of it and I appreciate that, I do, because this semester is trying to murder me even without the addition of horrible tentacle monsters -- “

 

“I am not entirely certain those are tentacles,” Hanzo murmured into the surface of his soup.

 

“-- or suspiciously tentacular not-tentacles, but seriously, man. Your life is like normal repellent right now.  _ Anti-normal. _ ” Lucio slumped back in his seat. “And your ranger dude thought sending you back to standard reality would  _ help? _ ”

 

“The principle is a sound one.” Zenyatta interjected quietly. “The purpose of returning him to us was to encourage his soul to anchor itself in the comforting rituals of the ordinary, of the life he led before it intersected with the unnatural. I suspected the medicine sent to aid that endeavor was dosed slightly too high and therefore overperforming in an unhelpful way -- reducing it, however, may have allowed for something even more dangerous. For that I am profoundly sorry.”

 

“I asked for your help -- you have nothing to apologize for, Zenyatta.” Hanzo drank the last of his bowl. “Perhaps I should -- “

 

“Take an academic leave of absence and put a couple thousand miles of ocean between you and whatever that thing is?” Genji suggested helpfully.

 

“I am not entirely certain that physical distance would actually constitute an encumbrance in this case.” Zenyatta interjected.

 

“Why not?” His brother replied, with the sort of maddening powers of logic he could marshal when circumstances demanded it. “The ranger suggested it would help if he stayed away from where it happened in the first place -- rationally,  _ even further away _ would be  _ safest _ , right?”

 

“The ranger sent me back here because you are my family,” Hanzo replied quietly. “And because being in your presence would constitute a form of healing. Would you like to contemplate the sort of convalescence I would enjoy if I crawled home and told  _ our parents _ this story? I would spend the rest of my life contemplating the world through a heavy antipsychotic-colored haze from behind the unrelentingly beige walls and discreetly reinforced windows of a psychiatric institution that I would never be allowed leave again. I’m half amazed  _ you _ don’t think I’m insane.”

 

“Admittedly, we kind of have the advantage of knowing you as the  _ less _ freaky Shimada brother.” Lucio replied soothingly, flicking a glance at Genji as he did so. “No offense, G.”

 

“None taken.” Then, grudgingly, “I don’t think father would let that happen, but I see your point.”

 

Hanzo let the breath he’d been holding out in a shaky sigh. “Thank you.” 

 

“In any case, I would suggest that our next course of action should be determining if that...painting...at the house is more than it appears to be -- “ Zenyatta looked up at the squeaks of dismay emanating from Hana.

 

“ _ Could _ it be? Honestly?” She asked, eyes approximately twice their normal size. “Because, as it is, I’m not entirely sure I wanna sleep there with it still up as it is and if there’s, y’know, a chance it and its I-can’t-believe-those-aren’t-tentacles might come oozing off the walls I’m completely sacking out in your car for the foreseeable future, Zen, just warning you in advance.”

 

“Yes.” Simple and unadorned and, not for the first time that day, Hanzo felt as though he were trying to breathe around a red-hot spiky ball of panic.

 

“So. We call the ranger.” Genji said, firmly. “As far as I’m concerned, a  _ whole lot _ of this is his damned fault in the first place and he can be doing more to help fix it.” Hanzo opened his mouth to object and found himself collecting a ferocious iridescent green glare for his troubles. “And, no, I don’t want to hear about how it isn’t because your judgment on this topic is completely impaired by your desire to climb him like a fire tower.”

 

“That is the worst analogy in the entire history of time.” Hanzo replied tersely. “And I am not -- “

 

“And Hana has a point, too, about staying at the condo not being the best idea until this gets figured out -- which, ideally, should happen  _ today. _ ” Genji continued doggedly on. “And you’re not going to be sleeping across from that no matter what.”

“Agreed.” There were days when it simply didn’t pay to fight, and this was clearly one of them. Hanzo fished the card containing the ranger’s contact information out of his pocket. “I’ll -- “

 

Genji snagged it in a single smooth motion. “I’ll call him. You’re supposed to be seeking  _ normal _ , right? Go to class. Keep your studio slot. Hang out in well-lit areas preferably surrounded by hundreds of people. We’ll meet up at the Student Union at...five? How’s five for everybody?”

 

A general murmur of assent ran around the table and Hanzo nodded, reluctantly, in agreement.

 

Genji grinned. “Don’t look so worried,  _ aniki. _ I’ll only chew on him a  _ little _ bit.”

 

*

 

Zenyatta dropped them off at the entrance to the main campus and, until Lucio and Hana peeled off in their respective morning lecture hall directions, Hanzo felt rather distinctly like he was walking surrounded by the world’s smallest, strangest Secret Service detail. Hana was clearly still itching for the security of a hockey stick and, rather than stopping to talk to the two dozen people who tried to flag her down as they crossed the quad, she waved and continued on, her gaze darting about as though she expected something unwholesomely flexible and sanity-blighting to lurch out from behind one of the pieces of exterior display sculpture scattered along their route. Given recent events, he decided he really couldn’t blame her for her excess of caution. Lucio was altogether more mellow but he was also carrying a messenger bag stuffed with enough notebooks and musical equipment components it could probably be used as an improvised melee weapon of some efficacy against even Things From Beyond With or Without Tentacles.

 

And Genji was, well, Genji and walked a considerable distance out of the way from his own first class to escort Hanzo directly to the doors of Kaplan Memorial Hall, in which lay the fine arts lecture halls and reservable studio spaces. Under normal circumstances, Hanzo arose at godforsaken o’clock in order to take advantage of the fact that there wasn’t an underclassman alive dedicated enough to their major to voluntarily choose a studio block available before the sun was even properly up, no matter how long they could have it. Genji could generally be counted among those ranks, as demonstrated by his reliance on sunglasses when confronted with the early morning light glinting off the glass-and-adobe exteriors of half the buildings on campus, which he normally only encountered under significantly different conditions.

 

“Hana’s not done asking questions, you know. She’s got that look in her eye.” Genji remarked, pseudo-casual, and Hanzo’s already well-knotted stomach abruptly contorted itself still further into a digestive fractal of perfect dread. “She let it ride just now because she’s actually got class in fifteen minutes but between you and me? She’s going to rake Zen over the coals once she’s got the time. And when your ranger gets here? I wouldn’t want to be him.”

 

“He’s not my ranger.” Hanzo replied, deeply regretting both the huevos rancheros and the hot and sour soup. 

 

“Semantics.” Genji gave him a sidelong look. “Hanzo -- “

 

“You want to tell them.” Hanzo finished the thought for him and paused for a moment in the shadow of one of the big pieces on loan from the Museum of Native American Arts and Culture, planting his back against its base and sinking down onto his haunches.

 

“Zen already knows.” Evenly. “He saw her in me before we even spoke for the first time. I think that we  _ have _ to tell them. Admittedly, I wish we could do it under more voluntary circumstances but...I think we owe them the truth.  _ Both _ of us.”

 

Hanzo closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment on making certain his breakfast stayed where he’d put it. “You’re right,” He finally said, fighting to keep the misery out of his voice and, apparently, succeeding.

 

“Wow, I am?” Genji actually took his sunglasses off and blinked down at him in genuine surprise.

 

“Yes.” Hanzo tilted his head back and let the cool of the granite statue base soak into his skull. “I think the ranger might suspect something, too. And right now it’s only a matter of time before everyone else finds out and then managing how much the fallout sucks. We might as well pull the trigger ourselves.”

 

Genji hunkered down next to him, hesitated fractionally, then brushed the hair back from his eyes. “It doesn’t  _ have _ to suck, you know. Our friends are smart, caring people who actually like us, which gives them a couple legs up on the rest of the clan on their worst day.”

 

Hanzo nodded wordlessly and found he didn’t have it in him to crush the hope in his brother’s eyes. “You’re right about that, too.”

 

“Clearly a lesser sign of the Apocalypse.” Genji pushed back to his feet and offered him a hand up, which he accepted. “Are you okay?”

 

_ No. _ “I’ll be fine,” Hanzo lied with great sincerity. “I probably should have picked  _ either _ the Tex-Mex  _ or _ the dim sum, but not both. Bad decision making on my part.”

 

“Well, at least you’re grown up enough to admit it.” Genji held onto his arm for the rest of the walk. “Where are you going when you’re done in the studio?”

 

“The library. I’ve got some research yet to do.” The depths of the Kaplan building yawned before him like the heretofore unsuspected entrance to the Underworld. 

 

Genji made a point of obviously texting that information to the rest of the household. “...We also might wanna kinda call the police again. I let the officer in charge know that you weren’t missing-missing and she left me a voicemail saying they’d like to talk to you to confirm that fact. I just found it this morning.”

 

Hanzo rolled his eyes heavenward. “Number?”

 

Genji sent it over and offered him a crooked smile. “Be careful,  _ aniki _ .”

 

“I promise I won’t drink my paint water.”

 

“Or fall asleep.”

 

Hanzo shuddered. “Not yet anyway. Go to class, Genji.”

 

The fine arts studios were located on Kaplan Hall’s upper floors, the best to take advantage of its relatively exposed position on the south-westernmost edge of campus and the significantly longer exposure to natural light thus afforded. Hanzo made his way quietly through the corridors where at least two early morning art history seminars were already in progress, avoiding the elevators that sounded like the mournful dying song of some beautifully tragic deep sea creature no matter how freshly maintenanced they might be, and took the stairs to his second floor studio slot. Fortunately for the continuing unsettled state of both his stomach and his sanity, his thesis advisor was likely hip-deep in holoslides in front of one of those seminars right now and if he locked the door and turned on the external sound suppression she would correctly interpret that as  _ Do Not Disturb Art Is Trying To Happen _ and accost him at their scheduled meeting. Unfortunately, at the moment, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less than Try To Make Art Happen thanks very much to the present state of his bedroom and most assuredly not while locked inside a soundproofed chamber whose emergency access keys were some of the most frequently misplaced items in the entire college. He did not want to contemplate the wreckage of human folly while standing on the brink of exposing his own venality, the stupidity and arrogance that Genji had forgiven him, whose consequences he could never undo. He was not ready yet to give up the warm comfort of the others’ kind regard, could feel a part of him trying to crawl away under some internal rock and die at the thought of Zenyatta’s quiet all-encompassing compassion turning to disgust. Or the ranger. He had to plant his back against the corridor wall and clench his jaw against a stomach-churning rush of nausea as his entirely too vivid imagination painted  _ that _ reaction shot against the insides of his skull. Which, admittedly, might have made for a strikingly personal and heartfelt contrast piece to the sterility of industrial-scale desolation but at the moment it primarily made him want to curl up in the crawlspace under the back stairwell and cry until he drowned in his own phlegm.

 

He did not, in the end, lock himself in the studio/potential supernatural deathtrap  _ or _ cry his face off under the stairs. Instead, he peered over the lower edge of the nearest exterior window to make certain Genji wasn’t lurking in the courtyard, taped a note to the studio door that it was unoccupied and free to use, and fled to the library for the sanctuary to be found in research and the stringently enforced lack of interaction with other human beings.

 

Hanzo took possession of a carrel close to the windows in one of the second floor study rooms, slotted his tablet into the physical network interface, and connected, pulling up the local news sites he had bookmarked the night before. Cora Hernandez had not been miraculously found in the one night since he became aware of both her existence and her disappearance. In fact, all the most current news suggested that the state police and the rangers were preparing to shift from “search and rescue” to “search and recovery,” now that the temperatures were dropping consistently into the thirties by night. Even a reward for useful information offer well north of a hundred thousand dollars had yielded no new clues to her whereabouts. Her parents looked as though they had aged a decade in a few weeks, her mother pale and distraught, and he could only imagine her agony. In the back of his mind, a soft, small voice wondered idly how much effort his own parents would have assigned to the task of finding him, or his body, and how long they would have bothered. The lord and lady of the Shimada-gumi were, in the end, fairly brutal in their pragmatism and wasting more than they had to on a bad investment was never their way. Genji would never stop and he ruthlessly crushed that thought before it could go any further and closed the news tab, refusing to indulge in the thought of what would happen if his brother encountered the thing that attacked him unaware of its nature and there he was imagining it in vivid, horrifying detail and this was definitely one of those days when it didn’t pay to be a Fine Art Masters candidate. It took a long moment of heavy peace-stress breathing and thinking fixedly of nothing but a horde of kittens and puppies gamboling together in a field of wildflowers to distract himself from the increasingly Memlingesque products of his mind’s eye.

 

The small furry creatures and oxygen supersaturation eventually had the desired effect and his hands were at least reasonably steady as he activated the carrel’s interface surfaces and requested access to several of the library’s more specialized databases. UNM owned a cultural anthropology department unrivaled in the west, even by the University of California system, and if there was anywhere he could go to cure his ignorance on a number of topics, it was definitely here, in its repository for thousands of books and even more scholarly articles and original sources. He brought up the anthropological database’s internal search engine, set his fingers on the holokeys, and hesitated.

 

If he stopped here, the voice of sweet reason murmured in the back of his mind, it  _ ended _ here. Genji would call the ranger, and he would come to sort out what was wrong at the house. He would finish the rest of his medicine and his soul would never go wandering away from his body again and in a half a year he would graduate and move to some corner of the world where the ghosts and demons of the desert would never cross his path again. And that would be the best, for himself and everyone else, except the next unlucky soul to fall under that thing’s eye, who might not have rescue as close or as capable.

 

If he did not stop here, that same voice murmured with a significantly sharper edge to its tone, if he insisted upon continuing to  _ look _ , then he was  _ asking _ the nameless thing that saw him, that saw him and stalked him and  _ attacked _ him, to continue doing so. It might even, perhaps, be an invitation to  _ more _ of such things. He was, that voice hissed, risking taking a door, already cracked, and throwing it all the way open and inviting whatever waited in the dark beyond inside. And for what? He was nothing and had even less to offer and he punched in his first search queries to the sound of sweet reason’s howling despair, watched the results scroll up his screen with a certain cold satisfaction curling in his gut. There was, to put it mildly, a  _ lot. _ He set is phone to give him a twenty minute warning on the five o’clock hour and dove in head first.

*

 

The phone pulsed out its incoming text vibration ten minutes before the alarm was set to go off. Hanzo separated himself from what he was reading with almost physical difficulty and felt about for it blindly, blinking after-images out of his eyes as the difference in illumination made itself felt. The study room he’d chosen was on the eastern side of the library, the sky an arch if rich blue twilight under the high overcast on the other side of the windows; in another hour it would be as truly dark outside as it was in the study, his desk a lone island of light. Something about that, once he realized how  _ alone _ he was just now, sent an icy sharp finger sliding the length of his spine.

 

_ Where are you? _ The text was, predictably, from Genji.

 

_ Library, finishing up for now. _ Hanzo replied, as he did, in fact, finish downloading the last of the assortment of books and articles he’d requested.  _ You? _

 

_ On my way to the Student Union. Want me to meet you? _ It had, even in text, a certain air of desperately-attempting-to-be-casual that Hanzo could not help but find heartwarming.

 

_ Certainly. I’ll be in the front vestibule. _

 

He slotted his tablet back in its case, gathered up his pile of handwritten notes, tucked them all into his bag and headed downstairs -- where all the people he’d expected to find engaging in frantic last-minute-before-midterms research/study binges clustered together around the reference desks, sitting eight to a table in a state of cross-disciplinary detente almost unheard of in modern academia, business majors sitting shoulder to shoulder with paint-thinner-scented artsy types, future employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory sharing their research space with the poli-sci wonks who would eventually make their professional lives miserable. The atmosphere was palpably tense, conversation low and not restricted to scholastic topics, and came to a complete halt as campus security --  _ armed _ campus security, Hanzo couldn’t help but notice -- cruised through the ground floor on patrol. He stepped into the vestibule and, as he waited, he couldn’t help but notice, amid the flyers advertising the annual all-college Halloween party at the Student Union and underclassmen desperately searching for non-flaky roommates for the rest of the academic year, a substantial number of Have You Seen This Person holo-leaflets. Cora Hernandez and her incredible reward, of course, but also at least eight others, some recent, within the last month or two, some from last year but still on display. He knew, pragmatically, that at least a few of them weren’t actually missing --  _ most _ missing people were, like him, not so much missing as temporarily misplaced -- and yet he couldn’t quite fight down the shiver as he contemplated them, their pictures almost all high school graduation photographs, and quietly hoped most of them had run away to Tisch School of the Arts or with a perfectly wonderful significant other their parents inexplicably disapproved of and not any of the other possible options. 

 

Something hit the glass of the vestibule windows a few inches from his head and it was only the gift of parental disappointment inspired self-control that prevented him from screaming and diving for cover. Also: the iridescent flash of Genji’s eyes in the light of the security lamps. Neither, however, prevented him from plastering himself against the back vestibule wall and suffering a minor coronary event because, in his most recent experience, glowing yellow-green eyes were not necessarily a source of comfort. “Earth to Space Station Shimada, come in Hanzo.”

 

“You are the  _ worst _ brother on the face of the Earth.” Hanzo informed him, testily, as he peeled himself away from the wall under the astonished gazes of approximately three dozen of their peers, four librarians, and a security guard.

 

“I’ve been texting you to come out for the last four minutes.” Genji replied in a tone of sickeningly sweet sweetness as he held the library door open. “And I don’t mind telling you at this point that I think your situational awareness could use some improvement and it’s no wonder you almost got eaten by an extradimensional tentacle monster.”

 

“The more I think about it, the more I’m sure there aren’t any actual tentacles.” Hanzo muttered. “And you’re right about the situational awareness thing. I was totally ignoring my phone.”

 

“ _ Wow. _ You actually just admitted that I was right about something  _ twice _ in  _ one day. _ The world is completely going to end, you should ask your ranger out sooner rather than later.” Genji flashed him a shit-eating grin that Hanzo had to physically resist the urge to hit with his bookbag.

 

“He’s not my ranger.” Hanzo replied and it was seriously starting to sound like he was trying to convince himself of that which was, all things taken together, just completely and utterly sad. “And I thought you were harboring an intense preconceived dislike of him for reasons beyond my comprehension?”

 

“ _Four days, Hanzo._ _Any_ way, I _don’t_ like him but I _have_ talked to him and he apologized sincerely for not contacting anybody and I filled him in on the situation as it currently stands.” Genji continued breezily on and Hanzo came to a complete halt in the middle of the sidewalk, to the annoyance of the pedestrians immediately behind him.

 

“ _ What did you tell him? _ ” He could not quite keep the panic out of his voice but he did, at least, not give himself away in English.

 

Genji stopped, glanced back over his shoulder, and turned all the way around. “Only what you gave up at breakfast this morning.” Hanzo could feel his face  _ doing things _ in response to that, things he could not particularly control, and while he was trying, Genji came back. “Really,  _ aniki _ , just the facts, I promise. Telling him how  _ utterly and transparently  _ into him you are would actually constitute a form of mental cruelty not sibling hijinks.” 

 

Hanzo took a shaky breath and let the arm his brother tucked across his shoulders and the length of his brother’s stride set the pace. “Thank you.”

 

Genji flicked a look out of the corner of his eyes. “You’re welcome. You know it’s not actually  _ wrong _ to desire human contact, right? I mean, I’m  _ completely willing _ to let this guy grow on me. Or another guy. Or another girl. Or basically any combination of other humans plus you so long as you’re happy, okay?”

 

“Can we  _ not _ have this conversation just now, please?” The Student Union came into view and he caught a glimpse of Hana’s bubble-gum pink light up headphones in the middle of a cluster of underclassmen in the quad courtyard outside. “What did he say?”

 

“Let’s wait on that until we’re all together.” Genji’s hand closed around his own and pulled him to a halt. “I promise I’ll try to like him.”

 

“You don’t  _ have _ to like him.  _ I _ don’t have to like him. It’s actually probably better for all of us if we kept any  _ liking _ to a bare and professional minimum because anything else will lead to tears and heartache and I honestly  _ cannot deal with this right now, Genji. _ ” He tugged, gently, and his brother followed this time. “Maybe if we’d met  _ any other way _ \-- “ Genji snorted audibly. “Or maybe not but in  _ any _ case -- “

 

“In any case what?” Hana asked, as she separated herself from her small army of hangers-on and tucked herself in on Hanzo’s other side. “Lucio and Zen are upstairs getting a table in the dining hall, by the way. What kept you two?”

“Unnecessary relationship drama.” Hanzo replied succinctly.

 

“ _ Very _ necessary relationship drama.” Genji responded, because the day had not yet dawned on the circumstances that would lead his brother to  _ not _ contradict him  _ just because. _

 

“You spent the last eight hours talking yourself out of telling Ranger McDreamy that you like the way his jeans fit, didn’t you?” Hana asked, tone mournful, and it was only her firm grip on one arm and Genji’s on the other that kept him from fleeing into the night. “Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. If you weren’t the only person in this household who’s never had a screaming vodka-fueled breakup phone call at three in the morning, I’d be considering an intervention right now.”

 

“No, that is  _ not _ how I spent the last eight hours.” Hanzo sighed, too weary even for indignation. “And I roll to disbelieve that Zenyatta has ever had a screaming vodka-fueled anything.”

 

“You have a point -- Zen is way too...Zen...to raise his voice except when -- “ 

 

“ _ Stop. Stop right there. _ ” 

 

Hana giggled evilly, Genji laughed outright, and Hanzo cast a pleading glance heavenward and a prayer for forgiveness in the direction of a thousand generations of all their cringing ancestors.

 

In a display eerily similar to that of the library, no one was sitting alone or, for that matter, even walking alone, and thus the three of them entering the dining hall basically arm-in-arm-in arm attracted no particular attention whatsoever. Lucio spotted them as they came in the door and waved them over to the table he and Zenyatta had claimed next to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the courtyard. 

 

“Dr. Saddind-Maas asked me to give you her best, Hanzo,” Zenyatta said by way of greeting, “And she hopes that you’re feeling better after your terrible ordeal in the desert and also eight other things equally urgent and I frankly suggest you check your email at some point if only to reassure her of your continued existence.”

 

“I thought I  _ did _ that already.” Hanzo self-defensively dropped into the chair between Zen and Lucio, fished his tablet out, and found twenty-three brand-new URGENT tagged emails, all of them from his redoubtable, incisively clever, tragically absent-minded thesis advisor who had, in fact, only processed the implications of his absence from the lecture hall after he’d drawn it to her attention. “...And this is  _ another thing _ I can’t deal with right now.”

 

“What’s the first thing?” Lucio asked, handing him a paper plate loaded down with the greasiest imaginable dining hall pizza.

 

“His total failure of nerve when it comes to strategizing an effective pass at Ranger McDoMe.” Hana replied from around a mouthful of french fries.

 

“ _ Dude.” _ Lucio gazed pityingly at him over the top of his glasses. “That’s something we can  _ all _ help with, you know.”

 

Hanzo closed his eyes, took the longest, deepest breath in the history of cleansing inhalations and heroically refrained from expelling it in a scream. “Thank you, I will take that under advisement. Genji, you had something you wanted to say once we were all together again?”

 

“That I do.” Genji grinned the world’s most malicious little brother grin. “I called the Ranger and gave him the scoop on what happened at the house. He agrees that, given the circumstances, it’s surpassingly strange and probably dangerous and that  _ absolutely none of us _ should go back there by ourselves until he’s had a chance to examine it personally. He has politely requested that we meet him and a couple of his colleagues there around sevenish, to which I agreed, and he also suggests that we not sleep there tonight no matter what, because he’s a little doubtful that this situation is going to get resolved in a manner not destructive of our regular schedules. Because why would it?”

 

“I knew we all should have packed an overnight bag this morning.” Hana groused into her pizza.

 

“If the ranger doesn’t want us to go back into the house, we will think of something.” Zenyatta soothed soothingly and Hanzo, at least, found his spine bending somewhat involuntarily under the power of it. “I spoke to a colleague of mine about our situation, and she is willing to allow us the use of her family’s vacation cabin for at least the next several days, if necessary.”

 

“Vacation cabin? Where’s it at?” Lucio asked.

 

“Just inside Santa Fe National Forest. I told my colleague that our landlord was seized by the sudden desire to repaint the entire condo and that we would need to vacate for at least a few days until the work was done.” A wry smile. “She seemed to find that entirely believable and only asks that we make certain the any dishes we use are washed and put away before we leave.”

 

“That’d be  _ really _ helpful if we could do that. I’d just need to sign out some recording equipment from the lab before we go…” Lucio pulled out his phone and sent out a message. “We’ve got  _ most _ of what Cora was working on before...whatever happened happened but we’re still short a couple hours of ambient sound design and if I could get some good recordings while we’re out in the country -- “

 

“Is that what she was doing on the project? Sound design?” Hana asked and accepted the tablet when Lucio handed it to her.

 

“Yeah, and she was pretty awesome at it, too.” Wistfully, and a quick glance around the room. “I heard a rumor this morning that the security footage review came back and an order came down from Administration a few hours later bumping up the security patrol presence on campus.”

 

“Yeah,” Hana agreed. “Along with a politely worded request that students stay together after dark and locking down the campus residences at sundown.”

 

“Why?” Hanzo asked, mystified.

 

Lucio’s voice sank to a level just above the background chatter. “Rumor also has it that the security monitoring network caught something going down  _ on campus _ that got missed on cursory review, or overlooked because her car was found.”

 

“Have any of the rest of you seen those MIB greyfaces hanging around? They’re not campus rentacops  _ or _ regular Santa Fe PD.” Hana leaned in as well. “They had a tech crew with them putting up some kind of receiver mast on the roof of game design main. Knocked us offline for, like, two whole hours.”

 

“They’re not cops. I’ve talked to a couple of them -- they’re a private contractor doing some research for the labs up at Los Alamos. Just a second, I’ve got a card -- “ Genji dug out his wallet, and laid a rectangle of intimidatingly black laminate, etched in blood red and lined in metallic silver: Technological Advancement and Logistical Operations Network, along with a contact number. “Something about anomalous electromagnetic readings, I think?”

 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Hanzo muttered and immediately drew the collective attention of the table.

 

“Why?” Genji asked warily, sliding the card back into his pocket.

 

“It might be nothing.” Hanzo replied and pulled out his own tablet, thumbing it open. “Or it might not. Or it might be related to something I heard recently and -- “

 

“ _ Hanzo. _ ”

 

“Okay, fine. This gets pretty involved, try not to fall asleep.” He pulled up a handful of holoscreens. “Have any of you ever heard of the Red Zone? In relation to here, the southwestern United States?” Three blank looks and one carefully guarded neutral one met that question -- Zenyatta was not a man with whom he would wish to play poker. He selected the map screen and flicked it open to the range of easy legibility. “The term dates from the time of the Omnic Crisis -- this,” He tapped the thick red line neatly bisecting the screen, “is US Hyperlane 40. During the Crisis, everything south of it in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas was designated the Red Zone, the potential route for the Omnic forces from the Nezahualcóyotl Omnium and the Brownsville Omnium to take north toward Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.” The blank looks became slightly less blank as the contents freshman year survey of American history seminars came flooding back. “Largest civilian evacuation in history, massive military buildup along the Hard Red Line, clash of human versus machine forces, I see this is ringing a bell. It’s why Albuquerque is still a pile of rubble belonging to the US military and why large chunks of extreme southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and the Mexican provinces closest to the US border, are only sparsely populated even now. The government actually  _ paid people _ not to move back after the Crisis was over and the only ones who stayed, or came back, were the ones with the strongest ties to the area. Like the Mescalero Apache, just to pick an example, and the people who resettled Alamogordo.” 

 

“What does this have to do with -- “ Hana began and Hanzo pulled up another screen: missing persons statistics in convenient graphical form.

 

“Even allowing for the massive post-Crisis population dispersal, this  _ entire region _ , the area that was once in or around the Red Zone, has a missing persons rate anywhere between six to ten times the national average.” He touched the map and lit the places with the highest statistical concentrations. “Maybe higher, because most of the communities further south of here don’t get a lot of official support and that’s probably skewing results. If an entire small freehold or farming co-op goes missing and the authorities aren’t there to notice or report it, does it still make a statistical blip? Probably not and nobody but the nearest neighbors will actually care. And another thing? This has been going on for  _ years. _ Decades, at least, possibly centuries. Since well before the Crisis though in statistically smaller numbers.”

 

“You just outed yourself as, like, four different kinds of nerd right now, I hope you realize that.” Genji remarked dryly. “So what  _ does _ this have to do with the electromagnetic wackiness?”

 

“The electromagnetic wackiness, and the disappearances, have been  _ known things _ around here since before colonization.” Hanzo replied, flatly. “Since before recorded history as Europeans consider it. Every indigenous culture that set up long-term housekeeping in this region recognized that the fabric of reality here was...weird and liminal in a not particularly friendly way. Even the  _ Conquistadores _ who came here looking for the Seven Cities of Gold realized it and  _ they _ kept written records. In modern times, it bled into UFO-related conspiracy theoretics -- strange lights in the sky, unexplainable sounds from beneath the Earth, campers vanishing without a trace and never being seen again. These aren’t  _ new _ phenomena, they’re  _ very old ones _ being interpreted differently, through a more scientific lens. The electromagnetic disturbances may be the precursor event to disappearance outbreaks -- organized disturbances have, apparently, been spiking upward in the area for at least the last ten weeks, if not longer. Los Alamos National Laboratory is monitoring it now.”

 

“Aliens.” Genji said, tone planed completely empty of expression.

 

“The word  _ naayéé _ is Navajo. It  _ literally means _ ‘alien monster.’ Things from beyond this world, that are  _ unnatural to it _ , which are hostile to humanity and view us as their prey.” He opened a third screen and pulled up the mythological compilation files, rolling his sleeves back to the elbow to keep them out of the way as he flipped pages. “The Navajo in particular recognized and named  _ dozens _ of different kinds, they had a whole complex taxonomy of types and individual creatures -- “ He flipped a page and Hana squeaked in audible distress. “Some of the worst they considered  _ gods _ \-- hungry, predatory,  _ alien monster gods _ that drove humanity nearly to extinction in prehistory. Like  _ Déélgééd _ the Horned Monster -- “ He flipped a page and Lucio half rose out of his seat. “Or  _ Tsé Nináhálééh _ the Monster Eagle -- “ He flipped another and Zenyatta audibly caught his breath. “Or  _ Bináá’yee Aghání _ the Monsters That Kill With Their Eyes -- “

 

“ _ Hanzo _ .” Genji’s tone was strangled, his grip was tight, and he pinned Hanzo’s arm to the table out of the view of the rest of the room.

 

Staring up from the middle of his left forearm, surrounded by the painfully twisted, hideously distorted lines of the tattoo he’d worn since his fifteenth birthday, was a single greenish-yellow eye. It twitched, visibly, beneath the surface of the skin, lines of ink contorting horribly around it and Hanzo’s head went dangerously light as it fixed on his face, tried to meet his gaze, serpentine pupil contracting to a single hair-fine slit as it did so.

 

Zenyatta’s hands, cool against the skin of his cheeks, bodily turned his head away; warm hazel eyes caught and held his own. “ _ Do not look. _ ” Then, slightly louder, “ _ None of you. _ Genji?”

 

“Calling.” His brother’s voice was tight, low and fierce. “Hello, Ranger McCree? We have a...somewhat larger problem.” A pause. “ _ This kind _ of problem.”

 

Over the line, from a vast and rapidly darkening distance, he heard Ranger Jesse McCree very distinctly say, “ _ Fuck. _ ” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

“Hanzo.”

 

Zenyatta’s voice sounded as though it were coming from significantly further away than a distance of a few inches. The slender, elegant hand cupping his jaw felt more like the memory of touch than its actuality. 

 

_ Hanzo. _ Now  _ that _ was far, far closer -- echoing behind the eyes he didn’t remember closing, forcing them open again. Zenyatta’s eyes glowed a cool silver, like moonlight on dark water, held his own effortlessly, and again he spoke without sound.  _ I know that it tempting right now to disassociate from your flesh, my friend, but you cannot. You must not. Your presence here may be all that protects your body from far worse than this. Please, do not let go. _

 

Hanzo forced himself to take a breath, a shaky, painful breath, and then another, and by the third he croaked out, “I won’t -- I promise -- I -- “

 

“Good.  _ Good. _ Breathe.” He did, and a few breaths later he could feel Genji’s death grip on his wrist again and a few after that he could hear Hana and Lucio urgently asking questions in low, tense voices. “Please, my friends. I will answer what I can in a moment. Genji, please pull his sleeve back down.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Genji juggle his phone enough to free a hand, and then he felt his arm being covered again. Somehow, that made the churning shock and horror tumbling around inside his head like a sack of rabid wolverines feel slightly less agitated and a tremor of relief ran through his body. Zenyatta saw, and risked a glance away of his own. “Lucio, do you still have that roll of duct tape in your bag?”

 

Lucio, as a matter of fact, looked as though he’d been hit in the head with a brick -- possibly, Hanzo was forced to admit, by a brick made out of psyche-damaging dread of the sort he hadn’t expected to encounter in the dining hall. Which wasn’t to say that the dining hall didn’t provide a frequent source of existential trauma, it just usually wasn’t the eyeballs where they shouldn’t be type.

 

“Wh -- what?” Hana elbowed him in the ribs with sanity-jostling force; something visibly clicked together behind his eyes. “Yeah -- yes, I do.” 

 

He fished around in the stygian depths of his messenger bag of holding and came up with an almost untouched roll of tape. Zenyatta accepted it, smiled the sort of gently encouraging smile that would make world champion athletes set new personal best records, and released Hanzo’s chin. “Hana, may I borrow your Sharpie for a moment?”

 

Hana wordlessly unclipped her signature pink Sharpie from its place on her keyring and handed it over. Hanzo watched, from a delicate, incipient-emotional-breakdown shaded distance, as Zenyatta methodically tore off three strips of tape approximately six inches long and then wrote something on them in a script that resembled no alphabet with which he was familiar and which left vividly pink afterimages on the inside of his eyes when he blinked. “Hanzo, this may be...somewhat uncomfortable. Genji, I am going to need you to brace his arm while I do this.”

 

Genji propped the phone up against the stack of pizza boxes occupying the middle of the table and, yes, that  _ was _ his Ranger looking worriedly out of the screen and from the way the image kept bouncing around it was fairly clear that he was in a vehicle and whoever was driving that vehicle had little to no concern for the limitations of either terrain or speed or possibly respect for human life. His brother slid close against his side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, whispering something in his ear that his mind absolutely refused to process. The first piece of tape went around his wrist, positioned precisely between the cuff and the skin itself to keep the sleeve in place, and it sent a jolt of something not quite pain but at least a close cousin to it all the way from the tips of his fingers to his shoulder. The second went around his forearm just below the elbow and this time the jolt was  _ much _ stronger and pain’s cousin gave him a call and Hanzo could  _ feel _ something writhing beneath the surface of his skin. In retrospect, he was pretty glad that Zenyatta had the sense to make sure his sleeve was covering that because he was reasonably certain that, should he have to look at it, gibbering madness would likely be the only rational outcome. The third went around his bicep and this time the jolt was a nerve-sizzling sensation not entirely unlike that one time he’d accidentally grabbed the business end of a live shock baton in his bare hand with similar head explody inducing results. When he regained consciousness, probably only a few seconds later, his head was lolling in the curve between Genji’s neck and shoulder, Lucio and Hana were bustling around the table gathering up plates and cups and chattering back and forth in a state of pseudo-cheerful sassy action camouflage, and Zenyatta had his brother’s phone in hand, consulting in a low, even tones with the Ranger. His skull was still buzzing hard enough that not a single bit of anything he could hear made even the slightest trace of sense, not the soothing words his brother was whispering against his ear, not the friendly smack-talk going on between their roommates, nothing --

 

In the distance, he heard it: low, soft, barely above the ambient noise level, weaving through the senseless babble of human voices as though it were trying to hide among them. A  _ howl _ , a reverberant, continuous ululation, modulating upward through a range of tones until it reached the deep-throated baying of a creature on the hunt.

 

At his back, Genji went tense, the arm around his shoulders and the hand still cradling his wrist tightening involuntarily. Lucio and Hana came to a complete halt and exchanged a glance, all the color draining out of Hana’s face as they did so. Zenyatta lifted his head and listened, his expression perfectly still.

 

“You heard that, didn’t you?” Hanzo asked, his voice a shaky rasp. 

 

“Yes.” Genji replied, and that admission in his brother’s voice unlocked the uncontrollable full-body tremors that had been waiting for just that opportunity to come charging out.

 

“You need to  _ go _ . You need to get as  _ far from me as possible _ and I -- “ Hanzo stumbled to a halt at Zenyatta’s upraised hand.

 

“We are at the UNM main campus Student Union.” He said, calmly, evenly, and somehow that made Hanzo’s heart stop trying to pound its way out of his ribcage, slowed the tremors to the occasional rogue shiver. “Yes, I believe so. I will call you when we are secure.” He hung up and stood, slinging his messenger bag across his shoulder. “We must move.  _ Quickly. _ ”

 

For an instant, total physical and mental paralysis greeted those words from pretty much everyone -- even Genji, Man of Action, didn’t so much as twitch out of his seat, admittedly because he might have been pinned in place. Then, Genji kicked his chair back and bodily hauled Hanzo upright on unsteady legs, gathering up their bags and handing them off to Hana. Hana slung their bags over her shoulder and nudged Lucio into motion, his face still fixed in the most perfectly appalled expression Hanzo had ever seen him wear. He nonetheless took Hanzo’s other side as his legs persisted in their misbehavior and together helped haul him along in Zenyatta’s wake as he cut a path for them through the dining hall and out into the second floor mezzanine beyond.

 

“Where are we going?” Hana asked, loaded down with three bags not her own and apparently feeling much more secure for it.

 

“Luminaria Conference Room -- no windows, only one entrance, and it is not currently in use.” Zenyatta led the way to the stairwells and the elevator. “We should...probably not trap ourselves in a small box that can be made to stop moving.”

“Stairs it is!”

 

Hanzo’s legs perversely steadied as they climbed and by the time they reached Luminaria’s door he could stand on his own and insisted on doing so as Zenyatta used his faculty access pass to allow them entry. Once inside, he relocked the door and stepped aside as Genji, Lucio, and Hana proceeded to barricade it with a folding conference table and all the chairs that were gathered around that table. Zenyatta liberated the roll of duct tape from Lucio’s bag and methodically circled the room clockwise, pasting torn-off strips of tape to each wall and writing on them in that afterimage-inducing script. Hanzo followed him and aided as best he could, tearing strips of tape, pulling aside tables and chairs, helping Hana build a secondary barricade in the middle of the room out of three more tables in a triangular formation and a selection of chairs at strategic points. She shoved him down inside it without any discernable hesitation and Zenyatta finished what he was doing and all-but sat on him in order to keep him there.

 

“What are we  _ waiting _ for?” She finally demanded, poking her head above the edge of the barricade.

 

“The ranger and several of his colleagues are on the way -- they should be here presently.” Zenyatta replied, serenely, the fingers of both hands woven together in that mudraish way he had.

 

“ _ How _ presently?” Genji asked, his hands hanging loose at his sides, eyes slightly too bright, a little too iridescent.

 

The lights overhead flickered once, twice, and went out.

 

“Hopefully  _ enough. _ ”

 

The emergency lights came on a moment later, far dimmer than they should have been given their dedicated internal power sources. A heartbeat after that, Hana lit up their little nest of presumed internal safety with her phone’s flashlight and her headphones’ exceptionally vivid pink lights. Also exceptionally vivid: the spheres of cool silver-blue radiance that burst into existence around the perimeter of the room, perfectly aligned with the strips of tape, banishing the deepest shadows to the furthest corners.

 

“Zen, please tell me you’re doing that.” Lucio sounded a little less than totally steady, for which Hanzo could hardly blame him.

“Yes, I am.” Zenyatta replied, perfectly calm, but frowning at his phone. “Does anyone have any bars of connection?”

 

Four phones were pulled from four different receptacles. Hanzo gazed with a certain desolate but not particularly surprised horror at the bright red X where at least five bars of wireless connection should have been and glanced up to find Hana and Lucio doing likewise. 

 

“I will take that as a ‘no.’” Still perfectly calm. “Does anyone have connection to the school’s wireless service?”

 

Hanzo checked, just to be sure that their isolation was as complete as possible, and was also not surprised to discover that no connections were available.

 

“Zen,” Lucio asked, poking his head above the edge of the fort, “could your...glowy orb things be cutting off our connections?”

 

“It is extremely unlikely.” Zenyatta replied, and began tearing off a few more strips of tape. “My boundary wards do not, in general, impede standard functions of reality. Or even telecommunications networks.”

 

“I cannot believe,” Hana muttered at him, “that you’re being stalked by the supernatural equivalent of a  _ coronal mass ejection. _ ”

 

“Sorry?” He slumped back against the table surface providing one third of their little triangular fortress’ walls and scrubbed a hand down his face.

 

“What do you suppose the ranger will do if you don’t contact him?” Genji asked, somewhat less than idly Hanzo thought.

 

“Preferably, drive faster.” Zenyatta replied dryly.

 

_ Something _ struck the outer wall -- struck it hard enough that the force of the impact visibly rippled across the surface, so hard that the orbs themselves danced in its wake. Hana squeaked and ducked back down, dragging him with against his will and piling on top of him as though she intended to protect him bodily. She was joined an instant later by Lucio, whom he rather suspected intended to protect them both bodily. A brief, intense burst of vividly green light shone through the cracks in their hidey hole, productive of another series of dismayed squeaks, and then Zenyatta was kneeling next to the barricade, applying more strips of freshly scribed tape to the outside. “Be calm, my friends.  _ That _ was not something to concern you.”

 

“Are you freaking  _ serious? _ ” Hana asked, incredulous.

 

“He’s right,” Hanzo wheezed from around the pressure her elbow was applying to his solar plexus. “That was Genji, not the thing.”

 

_ “Genji?” _ Lucio poked his head over the top of the table. “...Where did that sword come from?”

 

“Trust me when I tell you that it’s a long story. One that we were planning to tell you sooner rather than later.” Genji replied, lightly, and a second blow shook the opposite wall, sending a crack shooting from floor to ceiling through the plaster.

 

“What’s it doing?” Hana whispered through the crack where the tables met, as Zenyatta taped it over.

 

“Testing the structure of the ward barrier for weaknesses would be my educated guess.” Zenyatta replied and laid more tape, the tip of the Sharpie squeaking as the wrote.

 

“Are there? Weaknesses?” Hanzo could feel her trembling and did his best to wrap a comforting arm around her.

 

Zenyatta paused and was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, “I am certain there are. Whatever happens, I must ask you three to  _ stay down _ and  _ inside this barrier _ . Please.”

 

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Lucio, gods love him, rolled to the side, and put his back against the base of the triangle. “Hana, let the man breathe for heaven’s sake.”

 

“Oh!” She scooted back, as well, and Hanzo propped himself up on his elbows and from there slouched back against one of the tables. “Sorry about that.”

 

“No apologies necessary.” By unspoken mutual impulse, they all set their various light-producing devices in the middle of the triangle to supplement the pale silvery glow of the orbs now ringing their little bulwark. “I am more -- “

 

“What was that about no apologies being necessary?” Hana cut him off. 

“This is...not quite the same thing, Hana.” The fingers of his left hand tingled sharply, the sensation running all the way up his forearm, as though he’d just spent an hour sleeping on it at a terrible angle. “Your lives are in danger because of this. I -- “

 

“You’re right. Our lives are in danger. You can make it up to us in awesome cover art and attractive liner notes for our first -- what, six, maybe eight pro releases?” Hana flicked a grin at Lucio. “More if one or both of us flunks a midterm because, seriously, this is the  _ world’s worst _ supernatural bullshit timing.”

 

“Make it an even ten and we’re golden.” Lucio replied, scanning over the tops of the tables. “Man, why is it so  _ quiet? _ ”

 

“You are far better friends than I deserve.” His shoulder ached with a dull throbbing pain and he rolled it slowly in an effort to relieve the tension in it. “I -- “

 

_ Come _

 

The breath stuttered to a halt in his chest and, for a moment, all he could hear was the pulsing of the blood in his temples as his head went lighter and lighter.

 

_ Come _

 

It took all his strength to breathe again.

 

“Hanzo?”

 

“It -- “ He fought for the clarity to speak. “I can -- “

 

_ Open _

 

The pain seized and shook him like a terrier with a rat in its jaws, sharp and stabbing, from the center of his chest to the tips of his fingers, and it was all he could do to curl around it, desperate, wordless noises escaping him.

 

_ Open the wards _

 

The words throbbed inside his skull, driven deeper with every pulsation of his heart, every ragged breath. He felt, beneath his fingertips and beyond any conscious act of his own will, the tape bound around his wrist, felt his nails bite in, felt it begin to stretch and tear.

 

_ LET ME IN _

 

“ _ Hanzo, stop!” _

 

The tape came away from his wrist, taking with it a strip of skin, and tore raggedly across the script. Bilious yellow-green incandescence boiled up through the fabric of his sleeve, corrosive in its intensity, dissolving both the sleeve and the tape wound around it to blackened, crumbling threads. Filaments of that sickly light arced out from the surface of his flesh and hung there for an instant, swaying nauseatingly on their axes like serpents coiling to strike and, when they did, it was with serpentine speed and viciousness. Zenyatta’s wards blinked out of existence in coruscations of conflicting energies, silver-blue spheres overwhelmed and broken from within by hungry, loathsome tendrils boiling their length with extrusions that were almost teeth, were almost eyes. The sound that came out of Zenyatta as it happened was made up of entirely unequal parts of shock and pain and was still ringing off the walls as the light all-but died and darkness rushed in to fill the place it once occupied.

 

Hanzo felt something trying to force its way up his throat. It was, as it turned out, the sort of laugh that could be assessed as maniacal, malicious, or malevolent and, accurately, as all three, and it completely suppressed his desire to start screaming and never stop. Hana and Lucio, recognizing this as the self-preservation instincts activating signal that it was, decided  _ not _ to stay in the now-broken ward triangle with him. Or, rather,  _ Lucio _ sensibly decided not to stay and dragged Hana, kicking and struggling, with him and as far away as he could reasonably manage given the confines of the room. At the vast, insulating distance kindly lent to his conscious mind by substantial quantities of traumatic psychic shock, he felt his body begin to move through no voluntary impulse of his own, pushing himself to his feet, turning to face his friends. Lucio still had one arm around Hana’s middle even as he tried to dislodge the small mountain of folding chairs piled in front of the door one-handed. Hana was staring at him with the sort of genuinely heartbreaking anguish that would have gotten her all his available hugs, were he in any position to dispense them. Genji knelt with Zenyatta lying senseless in one arm, his sword braced tip-down against the floor in the other hand, his face a mask of horror and his eyes burning with grief and rage. Something about that made that hideous laugh fall out of him again, shoulders shaking with perverse and vicious mirth.

 

_ “Whoever’s in there, GET AWAY FROM THE DOOR! _ ” The shout was muffled, from outside in the hallway, and for a fraction of a second, Hana, Lucio, and Genji all froze in place at the sound of it.

 

Then Hana stopped struggling and dove at Genji and Zenyatta, all three going down together with a startled squawk from his brother, who absolutely did not expect to be bodily covered by a woman he outweighed by a substantial margin. Genji emitted a second, louder but rather more strangled squawk as Lucio joined the pile, dragging the lone unused table with him in an effort to provide them with more protection.

 

The subsequent explosion not only opened the door, it flung it across the room, along with the table and chairs piled in front of it, and embedded sizeable chunks of all of them into the far wall. The acoustic tiled ceiling closest to the door collapsed, taking portions of the far walls with it, raising a choking cloud of dust that took on the stomach churning illumination that his body was still shedding, that eddied and swirled as someone entered the room.

 

“Jamie,” A heartstoppingly familiar voice, sounding more than a little aggravated. “I think I remember sayin’ we needed to do this with  _ minimal _ force.”

 

“That  _ was _ minimal force.” Less familiar, but still enough to earn the designation. “Look, if I were  _ really _ overdoing it, it would have knocked the floor out too and at least a couple of the walls would be down and not just cracked and  _ sweet zombie Christ on a pogo stick, WHAT is THAT.” _

 

The sound that emerged from his throat probably constituted some kind of evil titter. The voice that came off his tongue and past his lips sounded like it belonged to the sort of creature that would spend weeks slowly torturing small, innocent things to death and, in all likelihood, did. “ _ Witch-thing.” _

 

The ranger stepped into the poisonous glow he was casting, dust whorls and strands of tainted energy alike swirling away from him, as though touching him would be their end. He was wearing the crimson-and-gold cloak Hanzo remembered from the house and it clung to him like a shield, its reflection catching in his eyes and lighting them with points of color that glowed in the near-dark. Behind him, a pair of shadows -- one mountainously huge, the other merely enormously tall -- began dislodging the wreckage of the ceiling from atop his brother and his friends.

 

_ “Witch-thing.” _ The voice possessing his throat crooned again.  _ “It is so good to see you again. I have missed you, all these years.” _

 

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.” The ranger replied, his face a still life in planes of shadow and unholy light, eyes burning crimson. “Hanzo, darlin’. Can you hear me?”

 

_ YES! _ Hanzo wanted to shriek but his voice remained still and all his frantic efforts to use it yielded were tears, blurring his vision, rolling down his cheeks.

 

_ “No,” _ Purred the thing and, inside himself, he screamed and raged and beat against it, to no particular avail at all.  _ “And...even if he could...what would you do? His flesh is mine. His soul is mine. Press me, and I devour him whole and leave his empty husk at your feet. Step aside.” _

 

The gunshot was sharp and loud, concentrated by the relatively enclosed space of the room. Hanzo’s ears rang, almost enough to drown out Hana’s involuntary cry of shock, and the stunned, wordless noise that came out of his own mouth. Distantly, he felt the beginning tremors of what was certain to be quite a lot of pain.

 

“Well, I gotta say, that’s where you’re wrong. Y’see, I’ve picked up a few new tricks since we last had one o’ these little chats.” The ranger shrugged insouciantly, the barrel of the gun he’d drawn and fired, so swiftly that Hanzo couldn’t even remember seeing it happen, still smoking gently. “Part of the job, y’know.”

 

_ “You -- “ _ The thing choked out, around a mouthful of something that didn’t precisely taste like blood but which nonetheless had a certain piquant saltiness to it.  _ “You -- yátaashkï -- “ _

 

“Uh-huh. Tell me something I  _ don’t _ know.” The ranger stepped forward and caught him close, free hand around the back of his neck, the barrel of the gun pressed into his belly.

 

The thing spat out a mouthful of not-blood and rasped, its voice a cutting edge of hate and fury,  _ “I will eat your heart before I am done.” _

 

“Yeah, yeah, good luck with that.” The sound of the hammer cocking was loud between them and his voice soft against Hanzo’s ear. “I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.”

  
It did, in fact, hurt but only briefly. As his consciousness faded into all-encompassing bright nothingness, so did the pain. The last thing he felt, as the ranger lowered them both to the floor, was the sensation of being enfolded in warm, strong arms, safe and protected, and the last thing he heard was his brother screaming his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More lovely fanart!: http://hellomynameisandiam.tumblr.com/post/160135534320/do-you-like-mchanzo-supernatural-elements


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More lovely fanart!: http://hellomynameisandiam.tumblr.com/post/160714251238/another-scene-from-solivars-ghost-stories-on
> 
> Some mythological notes of interest:
> 
> * In Navajo legends, Coyote occupies the cosmological slots that include “the Chaos necessary to give Order its contrast and meaning” and “complete asshole who is totally more trouble than he’s worth” and “cultural hero who may or may not be more trouble than he’s worth but, in any case, trouble.” Great Wolf is a protector but Coyote is his cousin – in fact, the Navajo word for “coyote” literally means “little wolf” – and Fox is cousin to them both.
> 
> * There are no coyote subspecies native to Japan but in Shinto cosmology, Wolves and Foxes are guardians, tricksters, and teachers, kin to each other, and servants/messengers of the gods when they’re not gods in disguise themselves.

_ The light that enfolded him faded slowly to gray and then to dark. The warmth that enfolded him faded slowly to cool, and it was the touch of something far colder on his eyelids that prompted him to open them. The wind that kissed his face also lifted the hair from his shoulders, heavier against his scalp than it had been in years, shining a pure and perfect white in the light shed by the river of stars arching across the sky overhead, bowing down to touch the peak of the mountain looming far in the distance before him. A cloak of red and gold lay over his shoulders and a glittering silver path lay at his feet and he stepped upon it and began walking. He did not look back; he knew that there would be nothing for him if he did. _

 

_ He walked for perhaps forever or perhaps less, and came to a place where the path became a narrow pass between two high cliffs. The shadows lay deep between the walls of stone but in those places where the starlight touched, the white of age-bleached bone shone among the drifting sand, here the unmistakable curve of a shattered human skull, there the fragments of broken human ribs. He sensed within those high bloodstained cliffs a cruelty and malice beyond even humanity, a hunger for blood and flesh that could never be sated. He sensed also that it slept, bound by a will both ancient and strong, and so he walked through the Rock-Monster Pass unharmed. _

 

_ He walked again for long or perhaps not long at all, and came to a broad plain that extended as far as he could see and beyond even that. In reeds the plain was covered, as tall as a man with great leaves upon them. The wind sang through them and the leaves struck against one another with a sound like the ringing edges of knives, from their tips blew tassels of dried human skin, sere human flesh. He sensed within those waving reeds a savagery and bloodthirst beyond even humanity, a hunger for blood and flesh that could never be sated. He sensed also that it slept, bound by a will both ancient and strong, and so he walked along the Slashing-Reed Path unharmed. _

 

_ He walked and before he knew that time or distance had passed, he came to an open valley. Cane cactus grew along its sides and across its flat, crowned in masses of sweet-smelling flowers and limned in thorns the length of a man’s hand, glistening with poison. Long strands of human hair hung from their hundreds of barbs and at their bases lay a tumbled scree of many fallen bones. He sensed within those spiny branches a hatred and spite beyond even humanity, a hunger for blood and flesh that could never be sated. He sensed also that it slept, bound by a will both ancient and strong, and so he walked through the Poison Cactus Country unharmed. _

 

_ He walked what only seemed a few minutes before he came to a barren land of rolling dunes, sand piled in waves taller than a tall man’s head. The wind whistled along them and stirred from beneath them the ashen remains of many who had struggled to escape and burned, shriveled to nothing. He sensed within those sparkling sands a wrath and wickedness beyond even humanity, a hunger for blood and flesh that could never be sated. He sensed also that it slept, bound by a will both ancient and strong, and so he walked through Burning Sands Desert unharmed. _

 

_ And so it was that he made the rest of his journey towards the far star-touched mountain and came at last to the forest that gathered at its feet. There in the shadow of the pines, just off the path itself, he saw a flicker of firelight and heard the sound of a sweet voice singing and all at once the cold and weariness of his long journey fell upon him and he found he could go no further.  _

 

_ Another traveler sat in the shadow of the pines feeding sweet-smelling wood to a gentle, warming fire and, coming closer, he found that he knew the traveler’s face but could not say why. The traveler looked up as he approached, a smile more warming than the flames curving his mouth, and his eyes shone golden in the dark. “You’ve come a long way just to see me, cousin.” _

 

_ “I...have?” Hanzo asked, and for the first time realized his journey had a purpose. “Who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?” _

 

_ “A friendly face in the cold and lonely dark, I hope.” The traveler said, lightly, and Hanzo knew the name belonging to that face, but not the name of what looked out through his unnaturally bright eyes. _

 

_ “You are not Je -- the ranger that I know.” Hanzo replied and stayed where he was on the far side of the fire. “Who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?” _

 

_ “Will you not join me by the fire, cousin?” The traveler murmured, and stirred the pot sitting in the coals, releasing a fragrant burst of steam. “You are cold and weary, and I have warmth and comfort to offer you.” _

 

_ “You call me cousin but you are no kin of mine that I know.” Hanzo replied and held his ground. “Who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?” _

 

_ “Ah, Hanzo Shimada, the things you don’t know yet could fill an ocean.” The traveler grinned and caught Hanzo’s eyes with his own and he felt himself touched by a will both ancient and strong -- touched, but not bound. “I think, my stubborn young friend, that the more important question here is who are  _ **_you_ ** _?” _

_ “I...do not know what you mean.” Hanzo whispered and shivered as the cold settled into his bones. _

 

_ “Oh, I think you do.” The traveler stirred the pot again, and poured a stream of fragrant liquid into the bowl he held. “Sit, child. Warm yourself and drink. Stop thinking of all those fairy tales you heard as a boy and attend to the here and now.” _

 

_ Hanzo came closer and sank down next to the fire, gathering the red and gold cloak that was not his closer around himself, and accepting the bowl the traveler handed to him. It was sweeter than the sweetest honey and more bitter than the ashes of ten thousand broken dreams and he knew, as he drank it, he would never taste anything like it again. He sat silently for a long moment, and allowed the warmth of the fire and the warmth of the drink soak into him, and when he spoke it was softly. “I know who I am, stranger.” _

 

_ “No. I think you do not.” The traveler stretched his long body out on the ground on his side of the fire, and for the first time Hanzo saw that the tips of his fingers ended in claws. “I think you know who you  _ **_thought_ ** _ you were -- who you  _ **_thought_ ** _ you were meant to be. You came here to this place you had only read about in books because you thought you would find it as barren and blasted and empty as you felt in your own soul...and instead the desert is alive in ways you never could have guessed. You came here to wither alone into the nothing you  _ **_thought_ ** _ you were.” _

 

_ “I  _ **_am_ ** _ nothing.” Hanzo replied, and gazed down, his reflection dark in the surface of the traveler’s strange drink. “I could do nothing to protect myself. I endangered the lives of my friends and my brother and could do nothing to help them. Minamikaze was correct -- I am not a dragon, and I will never be one.” _

 

_ “There are more things in this world than dragons and nothing, my cousin. There is more in you than that.” The traveler’s hand cupped his chin, claws gentle against the skin of his cheek. “And, for the record, Minamikaze is a judgmental asshole who’s been right exactly twice in his entire existence and when next you see him, you can tell him I told you that.” _

 

_ Hanzo choked on something halfway between a laugh and a sob, and the traveler’s fingers brushed the tears from his face.  _

 

_ “You do  _ **_not_ ** _ know who you are, cousin. But you have chosen the path that will lead you to the where and the when that you will.” Warm lips brushed his forehead. “You need only the courage to walk it.” _

 

_ “I -- “ _

 

_ In the distance, a howl rose, sharp as the edge of a knife and cold as death. The wind stilled before it and fled, the boughs of the pines overhead and the ground beneath them shivered, and the flames of the fire itself lost their warmth.  _

 

_ “The Serpent-Wolf hunts you still, hungry as only a thing that has tasted of your soul and now your flesh can be. For the sake of the one who lent you this, I think you should, perhaps, not meet him just now.” The traveler stroked his hand down the golden border of the cloak and seized his wrist in a taloned hand. “Wake up, cousin. We shall speak again.”  _

 

_ The traveler’s claws bit deep, drawing blood. _

 

*

 

Hanzo jerked awake and the first coherent through to crawl out of the swirling morass of inchoate madness that was his mind was,  _ I know that ceiling. _

 

He did, in fact, know it: large wooden beams, carved their lengths with repeating geometric motifs painted particularly vivid shades of red and gold, white and ocher, paler latillas perpendicular and he was totally looking up at the ranger’s bedroom ceiling for the second time that week and his head spun savagely with the disorientation of it. He was looking up at the ranger’s ceiling. He was laying in the ranger’s bed, wrapped in the ranger’s wonderfully soft and warm sheets and comforter, his head resting on the ranger’s pillows, and he had absolutely no memory whatsoever of how he came to be there. In fact, the very last thing he could consciously recall was the sensation of being  _ shot. _

 

He lay perfectly still for a moment and took stock of the contents of his mind. Yes, that was a rather vivid and unmistakable memory of catching a couple very real and sincere bullets in the midst of an otherwise surreally horrific dinner hour at the Student Union. Moving slowly, he peeled back the covers and pulled up the hem of the tee he was wearing, expecting blood and pain and bloody pain to ambush him at any moment and found, to his pure and perfect astonishment, absolutely no physical suggestion of anything untoward whatsoever. No bandages, no blood, not even a powder burn where the ranger had held the barrel almost flush with his body and pulled the trigger. His  _ arm _ , on the other hand, was wrapped in lengths of cloth dressing -- each finger individually, feeling too thick and clumsy to use properly, and up beyond the hem of the sleeve, the skin feeling prickly enough as he moved to discourage even thinking about unwinding any of it.

 

A sound caught his ear: something halfway between a deep breath and a gentle almost-snore. Given the precise gravity of recent events, it was with only a relatively small amount of surprise that he turned his head and found Zenyatta laid out next to him, deeply and comfortably asleep from the quality of his breathing. Beyond him, half-sitting, half-slouching in one of the ranger’s heavy old wooden chairs, his feet propped up on the far side of the bed, was Genji, his head thrown back and his neck crooked at an angle incompatible with human contentment. One of the ranger’s ceramic mugs, probably containing the world’s most powerful sedative tea, or possibly four times the average dosage of pharmaceutical-grade ketamine, or possibly both sat on the bedside table at his elbow.

 

For an instant the relief of seeing them both there, safe and unharmed, rose up in his chest and made his head spin, and it was all he could do breathe around it. Zen didn’t so much as stir when he touched his shoulder and shook him gently or when he slipped out of bed and padded around it on stockinged feet to check on Genji. Who did not respond in any way when Hanzo maneuvered his head and neck enough to insert a pillow behind both or rearranged the blankets a bit to cover his feet as well as his arms. It wasn’t chilly, precisely, but he fed the fire another sweetly resinous bit of fuel and closed the door firmly behind him as he stepped out into the hall, where it was genuinely cool. A wavering light shone through the kitchen entrance arch, its source an oil lamp on the counter next to the sink. The drainer, he could not help but notice, contained far more mugs than it was likely for one man to use on his own.

 

In the living room, he found the furniture rearranged -- the coffee table and a few of the chairs pushed back against the far wall to accommodate the introduction of a camp cot, occupied by Lucio, hands wrapped around the sides even in his sleep. Hana slept on the world’s most comfortable couch, wrapped burrito-style in three blankets, only the very top of her head peeking out. A second oil lamp burned on the dining space table and the fire was fed and as he turned he saw the flicker of firelight beyond the window seat curtains. He found his shoes lined up with all the others next to the door, his jacket hanging from the rack, and he pulled both on before he stepped outside, where it was so genuinely cold that his breath escaped in a puff of frost and an involuntary cough.

“Darlin’,” The ranger greeted him from the comfortably firelit shadows at the far end of the porch, “you should  _ not _ be out of bed yet.”

 

The firelight illuminated his face in flickering planes of light and shadow, his eyes dark and tired and entirely human, neither shining red nor flashing beast-golden and somehow more beautiful for it. It took Hanzo a moment to find his voice. “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. May I join you?”

 

The ranger patted the spot next to him on the bench where he sat. Hanzo folded himself into it, tucking his legs up to conserve warmth, and before he was even finished settling himself, the ranger spread the blanket he was sitting under over Hanzo, as well, and wrapped the free side of that red and gold cloak around his shoulders. Warmth enfolded him, shared body heat and the ranger’s cedar-sage-spice scent and it was all he could do not to curl against him, rest his head on his shoulder and his hand on his chest, the desire sudden and fierce. 

 

“May I?” The ranger asked, softly, and for a moment Hanzo couldn’t imagine what he meant.

 

“ _ Oh. _ ” Realization dawned. “Yes. Yes, you may.”

 

It came out, he thought, reasonably even if somewhat squeaky and the ranger’s arm came down around his shoulders, gathering him close against his side. Under the cloak he was wearing one of those heavy suede-and-shearling jackets and, beneath his cheek and the palm of his hand, it was just as soft as it looked. The fire was burning in one of those gourd-shaped firepits in an iron stand, giant extinct prehistoric squash consumed by the megafauna that once roamed Ice Age North America variety, the smoke was sweet when the breeze wafted it in their direction, and unless he was grossly mistaken that was the ranger’s cheek resting against the crown of his head and that was definitely his hand, warm, gentle, callused, resting over his own. Hanzo closed his eyes and  _ luxuriated _ in it, soaked in the comfort and peace, knowing that it could not last.

 

Ranger McCree’s voice, when next he spoke, was a soft rumble under Hanzo’s ear. “I oughta be askin’ you all kinds of questions about how your insides feel, but I don’t have the heart for that right now. You mind?”

 

“Not at all,” Hanzo murmured dreamily. “It can wait until later.”

 

“Glad we’re in agreement.” The grip on his hand, and across his shoulders, tightened a fraction.

 

Hanzo drifted, not quite asleep and not quite awake, safe and at rest and aware of nothing but the presence of the man next to him and the contentment of holding and being held by him. At some point, he heard something: a long, low howl that sounded nothing like the creature that hunted him and so he barely stirred. At some point he heard the rustle of almost-silent wings and the deep-throated rasping of an owl, somewhere quite close by. At some point, there were voices, human voices, including the ranger’s, but the gentle caress of a hand down his spine soothed him back down before they could disturb him. What finally brought him back was the slow fade of darkness into light, touching his eyelids from the outside, and when he opened them the eastern sky beyond the cluster of autumn-red dogwoods nearest the porch was growing pale with dawn.

 

The ranger seemed to know he was back without the necessity of speech. “Ana and Reinhardt are bringin’ some things over for breakfast this morning -- you up to helpin’ prepare our contribution?”

 

“Of course.” Hanzo agreed.

 

Neither of them moved except, perhaps, to squeeze the last microns of separation from between their bodies.

 

“I’m thinkin’ scrambled eggs and home fries,” Ranger McCree murmured. “I’m afraid I don’t have the kitchen space and probably not the time for individual eggs to order.”

 

“That sounds delightful.” Hanzo agreed, nestled unmoving against his side.

 

“And some bacon and sausage, because what this meal definitely needs is an abundance of protein options. I can almost guarantee that Granny and Grandpa are gonna bring fruit and pastries and all the breakfast sweets you could possibly want.” The ranger’s arm tightened around his waist. “I hope y’all find some spice tolerable.”

 

“Hana makes a  _ haejangguk _ so hot you could use it to keep warm in the middle of a blizzard.” Hanzo replied, and laced their fingers together on the ranger’s chest.

 

He was absolutely certain those were lips pressed against his scalp. “We’re goin’ t’have to get up, darlin’.” 

 

“A few more minutes.” Hanzo whispered and the ranger, evidently, agreed, because he didn’t move again until the sky faded from gray to silver to palest blue and the last of the stars went out.  

 

When he finally did move, he didn’t go far, rising to his feet with an audible snap-crackle-pop of unsatisfactory spinal alignment and a groan as he stretched it out.

 

“I’m sorry we sort of kicked you out of your own house. And your own bed. And, uhm, yeah, I’m just really sorry about this whole thing.” Hanzo unfolded his legs, pushed himself to his feet and found himself a moment later writhing in agony on the cold planks of the front porch while two million pins and an approximately equal number of needles reminded him why warm cuddles were not an actual substitute for healthy circulation. “Oh for  _ fuck’s sake. _ ”

 

Ranger McCree looked down upon him with an expression that was attempting, valiantly, to be Concerned and Kindly and was failing horribly at both because he was also visibly trying not to laugh. His dark eyes were dancing with a gale of suppressed cackles, the little lines next to them deepening from the force of his repression, the corners of his mouth twitching uncontrollably.

 

“Go ahead, let it out.” Hanzo muttered and sat up on his own, waving a helping hand aside and rubbing feeling back into his calves.

 

Ranger McCree’s laughter was low and husky and crawled into his ears and down his spine and into his chest, where it began frolicking around with his heart, which had abruptly forgotten how to beat in a calm and steady fashion. It hadn’t yet recovered when the ranger reached for his hand to help him up and it continued to skitter around, ricocheting off assorted ribs and internal organs as they soft-footed it through the entranceway and into the kitchen. The ranger flicked the control surface on the wall and soon the kitchen was illuminated by gentle, eye-comforting light panels scattered strategically around the room. He took the oil lamp chimney carefully in a potholder, blew it out, and locked it back into a circular clamp mounted to the wall above the sink. The pantry was deeper than Hanzo would have guessed, quite probably once an eat-in dining area repurposed to hold both a refrigerator and a standing freezer, built-in bins for edibles that didn’t really require refrigeration, canisters of flour, sugar, cornmeal, coffee, and the most extensive rack of spices, herbs, and loose-leaf teas he had ever encountered in a private home.

 

Ranger McCree wordlessly handed him a pair of unused rubber dishwashing gloves to put over his bandaged left hand and offered him first choice of cutting boards, knives, and vegetables. Hanzo settled himself on a stool at the work island and began turning a pile of potatoes into a bowl of evenly sized potato pieces while the ranger warmed the broiler and began laying out thick slices of bacon and rounds of sausage on two different pans. They worked in a warm and comfortable silence, Hanzo’s heart slowly settling back into its accustomed place, surrounded by a little curl of laughter.

 

The first pan went under the broiler and Jesse murmured, “I’m gonna check the fireplace in the bedroom -- if you could keep an eye on that for a minute, darlin’, I’d appreciate it.”

 

“Of course,” Hanzo whispered and his heart discovered renewed cause for acrobatics, some of them a bit nervous.

 

But Jesse returned a handful of minutes later mercifully unstabbed and unsliced. “Doc Tekhartha and your brother are still sawin’ logs, so I elected to let ‘em. The doc took a pretty hefty energetic shot to the third eye when all his defenses went kaboom at once back there, so he’s likely to need a bit of TLC when he finally does crawl outta bed.” He slid the pan out from under the broiler, scrutinized the quality of the cooking thus far, and slid it back in. “You got questions, I can tell.”

 

Hanzo did, in fact, have questions, potentially all the questions since the beginning of time, and they decided that was exactly the moment to engage in a vicious scrum for the honor of being first substantive inquiry out of his mouth. 

 

“Why do you use oil lamps and fireplaces?” The first substantive inquiry, knocked to the floor by inanity, stared at the inside of his eyeballs in unmitigated horror. “I -- I mean, you’ve obviously got a modern electrical system here, your solar array is better than the one we’ve got at the condo, and, yeah, that was -- “

 

“When the wind blows out of the north long enough, at the right time of the year, it can mess with modern electronics pretty severely. Even here, where we’ve hardened it thoroughly against such things, it can still whistle through the cracks from time to time, particularly when the local atmosphere is unsettled and primed to allow it.” He smiled, flipped the bacon, and put it back in to finish cooking. “Like now, really. When that happens, it can get mighty cold, mighty fast, so it behooves me to have alternate means on hand for warmth and light and cookin’. If the power hadn’t worked when I tried, we’d be doin’ this outside over mesquite charcoal on the grill.”

“That...doesn’t happen very often in the city.” Hanzo pushed the bowl of neatly diced potatoes across the table, wiped his knife and board clean with a damp cloth, and set to work on the peppers. “Or at least I haven’t noticed it if it does.”

 

Jesse laid paper towels on a broad serving plate, transferred the bacon to it, and set it inside the microwave to keep warm. “It’s a little different in the city. Reality’s a little more...solid there, I wanna say. Even so, weird stuff can happen in the right places for it -- abandoned houses with bad reputations, public parks at the times when nobody’s supposed to be about, that sorta thing. Given half a chance, unearthly stuff like we’ve been dealing with  _ will _ find a way.”

 

“Such as it did on campus...yesterday?” Hanzo guessed, because he didn’t feel quite famished enough to have experienced a multi-day blackout.

 

“Yesterday evening, yes.” In went the sausage and out came several boxes of eggs, a gallon of milk, and a bag of shredded cheese. “That was kind of an extreme example, but yeah.”

 

“Of course.” Hanzo replied, dolefully.

 

“And not at all your fault, because there was literally no way you could have guessed that this thing would be so persistent.” The ranger gave him the world’s most perfectly soothing Stern but Kindly look in response to his tone. “Doc Tekhartha, who I know for a fact is better-educated than average about things like this, probably didn’t guess it would be that persistent, or so bold, so y’all are most definitely off the hook.”

 

“I suppose that’s pretty true, but I didn’t take the whole dose of my tea the night before last,  _ and you know Zenyatta.” _ Hanzo looked up as all the ranger’s words filtered in and settled into place. 

 

“ _ Know _ is a pretty strong word.” A wry little smile curled the corners of his mouth. “I’d go more with  _ professional acquaintances _ \-- I guest lecture on occasion at UNM, and we’re both members of the loose association of practicing crafty types around here. We haven’t had cause to actually work together before this, though I gotta say, I’m pretty impressed with the tricks he pulled off on the fly using duct tape and markers. Be interesting to see what he could do with proper materials.”

 

“My brother is likely to hate that. A lot.” Hanzo finished with the peppers and set to work on the onions, as Jesse cracked eggs into a fresh bowl. “And I apologize if he was -- “ Hanzo gestured with his knife, “particularly cutty-stabby last night.”

 

“To give him the credit he deserves, he  _ did _ sorta see somebody he loves get shot right before his eyes, so I  _ really _ didn’t blame him for the cutty-stabby.” He fetched a whisk and set to work breaking yolks with untoward deep concentration. “There’s generally no good way to react to that.”

 

“So the shooting thing was...real.” Hanzo laid aside his knife and breathed peace for a moment.

 

“Kinda yes and kinda no.” Jesse’s hand closed over his own. “What I shot at you weren’t bullets in the traditional sense of the term -- they were a shell of matter around an energetic payload keyed to deploy a particular pattern of force. In this case, exorcism rounds. The physical mass of the bullet discorporates on impact, and only the energy penetrates to do its work, which forced the thing inside of you to let go.”

 

Hanzo shivered uncontrollably for a moment, and the ranger’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. “So it...it isn’t...it’s not... _ there _ ...any longer?”

 

“No.” And now those arms were around him again, holding him close as he shook and failed at not crying. “You’ve got some of what we call physical artifacts of possession still in place on your arm, and that’ll feel prickly and uncomfortable while it heals up, and we’ve still got some work to do to make you permanently safe, but no. It’s not still there and I have no intention of lettin’ it come back.”

 

“Promise?” Hanzo whispered against his chest.

 

“You have my word and my vow. This thing will never hurt you again while I’m still breathing.” Warm hands tilted his face up and warm lips brushed his forehead. “I promise.”   
  


“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” said someone quite nearby.

 

The ranger lifted his head, eyes narrowing, and looked around. “What was -- “

 

Hanzo groaned and buried his face in the ranger’s chest again, because that at least stood a pretty decent chance of ruining Hana’s shot. 

 

“Oh,  _ come on _ , don’t be like that,  _ you two are like THIS CLOSE to paying for winter break in Cancun for ALL of us.” _ Hana came completely over the top of the sofa, phone in both hands. “My stream thinks you two are  _ adorable _ , by the way, can you do that forehead kiss thing again but turn a little more fully in this direction so -- “

 

“ _ Hana. _ ” Lucio manifested next to her on the couch between one minute in the next and plucked the phone out of her hands. “Maybe we could give them, I dunno, five minutes of privacy? Sorry to interrupt, gang, but we’ve gotta go, I think I smell breakfast burning, seeya later.”

 

“That kinda is somethin’ -- oh, damn, the sausage.” Jesse snatched up the potholders and rescued the pan of gently smoking, more than slightly blackened sausage patties just before they caught fire. “Well, I hope y’all like it on the crunchy side. And since you two are awake, I hope you don’t mind bein’ drafted to help.”

 

Within ten minutes, the ranger had Hana measuring coffee and loose leaf tea and Lucio juicing two full bags of oranges. A taste test suggested that the sausage was retrievable provided the worst of the crispy spots were scraped off, so Hanzo took over that task while the ranger sauted onions and peppers over gentle heat and whisked together eggs and milk. Ten minutes after that, the aroma of perking coffee was propagating through the air and, ten minutes after that, the door to the ranger’s bedroom opened and Zenyatta emerged, blinking owlishly, into the light. 

 

“Hey there, Doc.” The ranger poured eggs-and-milk into the pan, gave both a brief stir, and retrieved one of his heavy painted ceramic mugs from the drainer. “How ya feelin’?”

 

Zenyatta settled himself onto the stool Hanzo vacated in order to fetch a packet of tea and a single-serving strainer. “As though I have been run over by an overloaded trash truck that was also on fire. Which is to say, crispy and in need of ritual cleansing.” A wry smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “And I would not refuse painkillers.”

 

“I’ve got a couple different sorts in the medicine cabinet -- darlin’, you’d be so kind?” The ranger asked, as he measured out the tea and poured the hot water. “It’s just next to the linen closet.”

 

Ranger McCree’s medicine cabinet was clearly assembled on the advice of a survivalist emergency medicine specialist who existed in active fear that the world was going to end sometime in the immediate future. There were at least six different varieties of OTC painkillers in the medicine cabinet, all of them in giant economy sized containers with their applications clearly labeled, and so Hanzo only grabbed the ones dealing with headache, fever, and body pain. Zenyatta was meditatively inhaling the vapors rising from the surface of his tea and being brought up to speed on current events by Lucio and Hana, with occasional interjections by Ranger McCree, by the time he returned.

 

“...and  _ that’s _ when the big guy -- “ Hana was saying, as he re-entered the kitchen.

 

“Roadie,” Ranger McCree interjected, finishing off the scrambled eggs and pouring them into an enormous ceramic platter.

 

“ -- yeah, he got sick of waiting for everybody to hug it out and just picked you up,” She made a motion not unlike someone hefting a load of something on the blade of a shovel, “heaved you over one shoulder like sack of rice and started walking and we pretty much had to move it or lose it at that point, so Genji put his sword away -- and, believe me, I  _ want to know _ where that came from because there is  _ no way _ it came out of his backpack because it’s not there now and it wouldn’t fit anyway, I did  _ measurements _ \-- and he and Ranger McHottie here carried Hanzo down the stairs and there was smoke and rentacops and real cops and fire and rescue all over the place and the  _ entire campus _ was blacked out and so was about half the city around us and before we finally fell asleep last night the news was saying some kind of major subterranean power relay station right near the school blew and that’s what they were blaming the whole thing on as of right now.” Hana took several deep breaths to recover from the oxygen deficiency that recital caused her. “And so, here we are, about to have breakfast.”

 

“Thank you,” Zenyatta replied warmly, to them both, as he selected his analgesic of choice. “It seems quite an eventful evening was had by nearly everyone.”

 

“That’s one way to describe it.” Lucio looked up from adding sugar and water to the jug of orange juice. “You accepting new patients, Doc?”

 

“I’m almost certain that the ethical canons of my profession don’t really cover situations like this so, yes, of course.” Zenyatta sipped his tea.

 

“Oh, good, ‘cause I’d hate to have to explain this to any other doctor.” 

 

The ranger’s phone chimed gently and he stepped around the corner to answer it. Hana and Lucio exchanged a glance and immediately dragged him and Zenyatta into a huddle over the prep island.

 

“Are we agreed that this guy is possibly the hottest thing to ever wear a uniform apparently  _ designed _ to absolutely negate personal hotness?” Hana asked, her tone low and intense.

 

“We are in agreement,” Lucio replied and Hanzo buried his burning face in his hands with an audible groan. “However, the precise state of his hotness is not really my concern at this moment. I admit, I was kinda mentally downplaying the whole ‘magic tea meant to keep my soul in one place’ thing in my head, Han, sorry about that, but, seriously what  _ is _ this guy? Because I’m thinking ‘park ranger’ is only part of the definition. And that’s leaving out Roadie the Friendly Giant and his friend the psycho genius demolitions expert.”

 

“I could tell you,” Zenyatta murmured in the sort of low, soothing tones that had the effect of taking everyone’s body language and blood pressure down a few notches. “But it would be rude to discuss such things behind his back, when he has taken us into the safety of his home. I counsel patience.”

 

“I can do patience.” Hana agreed. “And not to belittle the seriousness of anything, really, that was pretty scary and intense back there, I mean, he totally shot you. But you weren’t shot? And it was freakworthy, but he was just so...nice? And he made us hot cocoa with real chocolate and gave us fresh clothes to sleep in and made sure we were all safe and comfortable and -- “

 

“Yes, I know,” said Hanzo who did, in fact, know quite well. “It seems to be his thing. Also, I understand that they weren’t real bullets.”

 

“Yeah, he said that but I’m not entirely sure Genji believed him which is another thing that’s a thing --  _ Genji, man. _ ” Lucio flicked a glance down the hallway. “Your brother can get pretty hardcore from time to time but until last night I never thought I’d see him flat-out ready to kill somebody. And by ‘ready’ I mean ‘Hana and I had to physically restrain him from stabbing your boyfriend.’”

 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Hanzo replied to a chorus of eyerolls that included, to his surprise, Zenyatta. 

 

“Semantics.” Hana replied, in almost precisely the same tone Genji used when he said it. “Listen, Hanzo, I’m going to strongly suggest that your face be the first thing he sees in order to prevent a potential outbreak of life-threatening violence.”

 

“That is not a bad idea at all.” Lucio concurred.

 

“I agree.” Zenyatta sipped his tea.

 

“Is this your way of getting me out of the kitchen so you can talk about me?” Hanzo asked, eying them all with newfound suspicion.

 

Any protestations of innocence were interrupted by the front door opening and closing and the ranger rejoining them, smoothing a pained look off his face. “Well, that was Ana and Rein, they’ll be here in about fifteen minutes and they’re bringing Jack and Gabe with them so...we’re going to need more seats. If you two,” he nodded at Hana and Lucio, “could give me a hand with that, I’d appreciate it greatly.”

 

“Sure!” Hana chirped. “Incidentally, do you have any more of these shirts? In pink? I mean, the fit’s nice and all but this isn’t really my color.”

 

The ranger smiled that genuine, bone-melting smile of his and Hanzo could not help but notice Hana’s knees swaying under the influence. “Y’all have no idea. There’s technically a gift shop in the park office across the way there -- I’ve got more stuff packed away in storage than I’ve ever sold. I’m sure we’ll be able to find you something after breakfast.”

 

“Cool. And a green one for Lu and Genji. And blue for Hanzo and Zen. And can we get our National Park Service passports stamped and you’ve still got those little pins and lanyard charms, right? I need to add those to my collection and maybe shoot some video and don’t you have some audio gear in your bag, ooooh, we could do a little mini-documentary and maybe our grades won’t get docked too hard…” 

 

“She’s plotting something, isn’t she?” Zenyatta asked, amused, and finished his tea.

 

“I’m almost totally certain of it, yes.” Hanzo agreed. “I should probably see to Genji.”

 

“I concur. But before you go...may I?” Zenyatta gestured and Hanzo realized he was still wearing gloves and that what he wanted to see was beneath them.

 

“Of course.” He had, miraculously, not sweated through the bandages wrapped around his fingers despite the relative temperature inside the gloves.

 

Zenyatta took his hand in both of his own and bowed over it, eyes drifting half-closed and a low hum rising in his throat as he examined it, as he turned his wrist over to reveal the five tiny spots of dried blood welling up through the fabric. Hanzo almost jolted backwards out of his grip at the sight. “Whoever crafted this binding is skilled at their work.”

 

“If I hadn’t pulled yours loose -- “ Hanzo began and Zenyatta reached up to place two fingers across his lips.

 

“Mine were a stopgap, at best, and I am willing to guess that we all underestimated the lengths this thing would go to in its efforts to claim you. You have nothing to apologize for, least of all to me.” He looked up, eyes still gleaming faintly silver.

 

“You lot are in  _ collusion _ to make sure no contrition from me goes unanswered, aren’t you?” Hanzo complained. “You were  _ hurt _ .”

 

“Would offering an apology to me, and me accepting it, make you feel better about this situation?” Zenyatta asked with all apparent sincerity.

 

“ _ Yes. _ ” Hanzo paused for a moment, flustered, then soldiered on. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

 

“Very well. You apology is accepted.” Zenyatta smiled serenely, poured a cup of coffee from the carafe steaming gently on the counter, and handed it to him. “You should probably take this and go before the smell wakes him.”

 

“Yes, I probably should.” Hanzo paused just long enough to adulterate the cup to his brother’s preferences, squared his shoulders, and marched down the hall.

 

He opened the door just enough to peek and found Genji still asleep, somewhat more sprawled out than when he’d left, but at least he hadn’t managed to completely lose the pillow even if the blanket was mostly on the floor. Given his brother’s well-known tendency to flail about violently upon waking, he placed the coffee cup on the ranger’s chest of drawers and approached slowly, casting about for something to jostle with from a safe distance and settling on the cast iron poker racked up next to the fireplace.

 

“Genji.” Hanzo whispered, gently prodding the bottom of the nearest foot with the tip of the poker. “Wake up,  _ ototo _ , breakfast is ready.” 

 

Genji’s nose twitched and he shifted his foot away from the source of the discomfort, but he otherwise did not stir. Hanzo reconsidered the angles of the room, his brother’s obnoxiously long reach with all his limbs, and repositioned into a place unlikely to result in being kicked in the head by sudden, involuntary movements.

 

“ _ Genjiiiiii _ ,” Hanzo cooed, somewhat louder, and nudged his brother’s shoulder gently with the tip of the poker. “Wake up, or Hana’s going to eat all the bacon.”

 

Genji’s arm flicked out and batted the poker away with such force that it bounced off the far wall and rolled off somewhere under the bed. And then he started snoring.

 

Hanzo took a deep breath, made peace with his ancestors, and leaned over far enough to take a solid hold on Genji’s elbow, shake it vigorously for six seconds, and bark, “ _ Genji! Wake up!” _

 

Leaping backward with the trained agility of someone with Genji Shimada for a brother, he actually managed to avoid being biffed by the sudden excess of limbs emerging from the depths of that chair, some of which were vividly translucent green, one of which was most assuredly a broad golden fringed tail, and even rescued the pillow from the outer regions of the fireplace before it got too badly scorched. The chair hit the wall just to the left of the windows, for which Hanzo was intensely grateful, as Genji heaved himself to his feet, looking about wildly for whatever it was that woke him, and finally settled on him, pouring a cup of water on the last of the smoldering spots on the pillow. Hanzo had to look away from the expression on his brother’s face and thus he missed it when Genji came over the bed in two bounces and was subsequently surprised by the incoming force of his embrace.

 

“Genji, it’s alright, I’m okay, I’m not even hurt,” Hanzo murmured comfortingly. “Well, okay, I’m a  _ little _ hurt. But -- “

 

“I saw that thing shoot you.” Genji growled against his ear, and the rage in it was almost more painful than his fear. “I thought I was watching you die.”

 

“I know. And I am so sorry. For all of this.” He reached up and stroked the back of his brother’s head back down into configuration not resembling furiously spiky scales. “I never meant to do this to you and -- “

“It’s not  _ me _ you should be worrying about.” Genji pulled back, only the barest hint of iridescence in his eyes, expression still fierce. “That thing, it -- “

 

“It’s gone.” Hanzo assured him, squeezing his hand gently. “The ranger’s bullets forced it out of my body. He says there ways to make me safe from it.”

 

Genji looked, very much, as though he wanted to say more, at considerable and vituperative length. “That...ranger. Is he here?”

 

“Out in the sitting room setting up for breakfast. There’s going to be company.” The resonant boom of something large and heavy hitting something strong and only dubiously flexible echoed down the hall. “That might be them now, actually.”

 

“I don’t suppose you’d climb out the window and run if I asked it, would you?” Genji asked, his tone perfectly even.

 

“Genji.” Hanzo replied quietly. “Whatever is happening here is beyond anything we’ve experienced before, together or apart. I...do not think running would help, no.”

 

“Very well. Together, then?” He offered a hand.

 

Hanzo took it. “Together. I promise.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that.”

 

New voices, some of them familiar, some of them not, were traveling down the hall as they stepped out, Genji taking the lead with the sort of tension in the lines of his body that suggested a willingness to  _ deliberately _ kick someone in the head. 

 

“...You didn’t bring any of the dogs?” That was the ranger, sounding slightly disappointed.

 

“The Trio are sacked out in the dungeon from a long night of doing nothing particularly stressful.” Wryly and that was Hot Vampire/Gravelly Commando Dad. “Binky and Spot are on patrol. They both think we’re overdoing it a little, by the way.”

 

“Yeah, well, they’re allowed to think that and I’m allowed to hope they’re right and if the Serpent-Wolf doesn’t come slinkin’ out of the desert to try the border defenses at any point in the next few days we’ll all be very happy with ourselves.” The ranger heard them coming and turned to face them as they entered the kitchen, a carafe of coffee in one hand and a pitcher of orange juice in the other. “Misters Shimada, you’re just in time. Breakfast is on the table.”

 

“Thank you.” Genji’s tone was just on the subarctic side of polite. “That sounds wonderful.”

 

The ranger flicked a glance at him past his brother’s shoulder and Hanzo lobbed it back with a silently mouthed,  _ it’s okay. _ He nodded slightly and led the way into the reconfigured sitting room, now with most of its actual sitting pushed up against the walls in favor of the kitchen table turned long way across the room, a folding table extension, and a random selection of chairs, most of which were now occupied. Zenyatta sat in a nylon camp chair, engaging in a quiet but intense conversation with a stately older woman, her silver hair falling over her shoulder in a thick braid, her left eye covered in an elegantly embroidered cloth-and-leather patch, the other underscored by the age-faded curves of a tattoo. Hana and Lucio sat to either side of a mountain -- an older man, enormously tall even in his seat, shoulders broad and dense with muscle, his beard and hair conspiring to gift him with a perfectly leonine mane to go with his deep, booming voice. All three were chatting amongst themselves. Hot Vampire Dad had settled down across from them, his cane in easy reach, interjecting embarrassing details into what was obviously an already amusing story. He found Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad not at the table but occupying one of the chairs near the fireplace, every single shadow in the room seeming to congregate around him specifically, knitting needles flashing in the firelight. Because he was, of course, knitting.

 

“Alright you heathens, who wants what to drink?” Ranger McCree asked, holding up his burden. “Hanzo, Genji, make yourselves comfortable. Somebody fix these two a plate.”

 

Hanzo selected the seat directly across from Zenyatta and his regal conversational companion and Genji, of course, took the one immediately next to it, which also happened to be next to Hot Vampire/Commando Dad, whose genial smile did absolutely nothing to warm the local atmosphere. “Bacon?”

 

“Please,” Genji unbent enough to remember his manners as platters were passed and drinks were poured.

 

Ranger McCree took the last unclaimed seat, the one at the head of the table. “Thank y’all for comin’. Ana and Rein, you’ve already Hana and Lucio. These fine gentlemen are Hanzo and Genji Shimada. Gentlemen, this is Ana Amari and her husband, Reinhardt Wilhelm, friends and colleagues of mine for many years long duration.”

 

“Greetings and welcome.” Ana’s smile was warm but her eyes were sharp and he could almost feel the intensity of her gaze pinning him to the back of his chair. “I have looked forward to meeting you, Shimada-san.”

 

“The honor is entirely mine.” Hanzo bowed from the shoulders -- anything else felt fundamentally incorrect -- and planted an elbow in Genji’s ribs to encourage a similar gesture. “Your efforts have already aided me greatly, for which you have my thanks, and I am pleased to meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances.”

 

Ana chuckled low in her throat and saluted the sentiment with her coffee mug.

 

“And that’s Jack Morrison,” Ranger McCree added wryly, “and the antisocial fella over in the corner there is Gabriel Reyes. They’re the hippies that run the garden shop down the way that I told you about earlier.”

 

“And, yes, we are his parents.” Jack added, innocently, taking a sip of orange juice.

 

“Technically,  _ I _ am  _ their _ guardian but, yes, they’re also my parents.” Ranger McCree admitted, adding food to his own plate. “That’s why even Uncle Sam doesn’t have much to say about them sharin’ this lovely slice of the Cerrillos hills with me.”

 

“How does  _ that _ work?” Hana asked.

 

“It’s complicated.” They answered in nearly three-part harmony.

 

“More complicated than we need to get into right now given how complicated this situation already is.” Ranger McCree cleared his throat.

 

“ _ Speaking _ of which,” Hana continued, around a mouthful of bacon, “I would really like to know how, exactly, you managed to shoot  _ him _ ,” she gestured with her fork in Hanzo’s general direction, “twice in the chest without leaving a mark on him? And also why it is he was doing a credible imitation of that creepy monster dude from those movies last night and also why he painted the world’s most disturbing impressionist Lovecraftian horror on his bedroom wall and while we’re at it a thorough and complete explanation of  _ all you people, including you, Zen,  _ would not be out of order.” 

 

A ringing silence followed. Hana glared into it, utterly unrepentant. “Look,  _ somebody _ had to say it. So just  _ spill _ already and get it over with.”

 

“You’re not wrong about that, Miss Song.” Ranger McCree replied evenly. “Y’all deserve some straight answers, though there are some parts of this that I can only just guess at still. But I’ll tell you what I can.”

 

“I actually thought the painting was a bit more Cubist than Impressionist.” Genji observed, in the tone of one musing aloud.

 

“Genji, if you try to derail the confession in some misguided attempt to protect your brother, I will come over there and stab you with this fork.” Hana brandished it threateningly.

 

“None o’ that, please. While I’ve got the supplies to fix most things up, we  _ really _ don’t need any excess bloodshed right now.” Jesse flicked a glance around the table. “Folks, would you mind helpin’ me a bit with this?”

 

“Of course.” Zenyatta set down his teacup. “I admit, this is not precisely how I wished to tell you this, but it seems that we all have little recourse under the circumstances. Hana, I and several other people sitting at this table, are craftworkers.”

 

Hana and Lucio presented him with identically blank looks of incomprehension. Hanzo, having heard that term before and somewhat longer to begin making connections, managed to express less blankness. Genji, at his side, was neither blank nor curious but serenely unconcerned, which under the circumstances practically shouted  _ I know what that means _ . Hana  _ noticed _ and glared a few layers of skin off his face.

 

“So you…” Lucio ventured. “...do crafts? Like arts and crafts? Woodworking? Throw me a bone here, Zen.”

 

“What we do is both an art  _ and _ craft -- several different arts, several different crafts, born from different traditions from around both this world and, I suspect, others.” Zenyatta held out a hand and, for the first time, Hanzo saw the threads of radiance beneath his dark skin, hair-fine patterns of pearlescent light that spread across the flanges of his fingers, the palm and the knuckles, over his wrist and up his arm, around his eyes and lips and brow, glowing cool silver-blue-golden. A sphere, not at all unlike the ones that had appeared the night prior, curled into existence above his outstretched palm and he felt, at a level almost beneath conscious awareness, the tension he had been carrying in his shoulders, the quiet anxiety that had coiled in his stomach, easing away because here, among these people, he had nothing to fear. “It is mine to perceive the harmony and discord of others’ souls, to aid them in healing themselves when those forces come out of equilibrium in ways that do them harm. My way is a way of balance and of care, taught to me by my parents before they left this world.” He closed his hand and the sphere blinked out of existence.

 

“You will find that most of us were taught by our parents.” Reinhardt’s voice was as deep as the size of his chest suggested, a low rumble with a marked accent. “My mother was a knight of the old ways and my father a runespeaker. As their only child, I was given the gift of both their teachings and from them forged my own path, a way of protecting those who cannot protect themselves from the evils of this world and the worlds that lie beyond it.”

 

“Rein built the wards that help keep this place safe and somewhat hidden. People can find it, if they stumble across it physically like you did, Hanzo, but to everybody else…” Jesse shrugged slightly. “It’s kinda vague. Folks know it exists, it’s still on the map but...”

 

“If you find your way here, it is usually for a reason.” Ana caught and held his gaze. “Even if that reason is not immediately apparent.”

 

“Holy shit.” Hana breathed. “Magic. You are talking about real, honest as a punch in the face  _ magic. _ And, seriously, because you pulled that lightshow, Zen, I can’t even accuse you of being high.”

 

“So the magic soul-healing tea is also a real thing, and you’re the one that made it.” Lucio directed the almost-question at Ana and she, thankfully, looked away just before she reached the core of his soul.

 

“Yes. I have cultivated many and diverse skills over the years but my primary practice these days also lies in the healing arts, both of flesh and soul.” A dry chuckle. “I can show you my workshop, if you would like.”

 

“Yeah, I...kinda think I would, if you don’t mind?” Lucio grinned.

 

“Not at all. But later. We still have much to discuss.” Ana smiled, as well, slightly mysterious around the edges, and picked up her own teacup.

 

“So -- does that mean you two are  _ actually _ a vampire and  _ actually _ a smoke monster?” Genji asked and it took all of Hanzo’s strength not to kick him under the table and keep kicking until he got the point.

 

“No.” Jack replied.

 

“Yes.” Gabriel answered from somewhere beyond Mount Reinhardt.

 

“Which is to say, no, Jack is not a vampire he just looks like one and Gabe  _ totally is _ a smoke monster, at least part of the time.” Jesse replied, looking heavenward for strength. “Trust me when I say they’re mostly harmless.”

 

“ _ Mostly. _ ” In serene tones of unmistakable threat from somewhere beside the fireplace. “So back it down a notch, kid, and remember whose roof you’re under.”

 

“Like I said, antisocial. Don’t mind him.” Jesse smiled the world’s most pained smile and held up a pitcher. “More juice?”

 

“No thanks.” Genji smiled the most perfectly malicious smile in the history of the universe and visibly elected to ignore good advice. “So, what are  _ you _ good for, Ranger McCree? It’s clearly not  _ healing _ or even really  _ protecting _ so...what, exactly, do you do to make this place safe enough for my brother?”

 

“ _ Genji. _ ” Through the blood ringing in his ears, Hanzo was vaguely gratified by the fact that Zenyatta  _ sounded _ as horrified as he  _ felt. _

 

Jesse very carefully moved his hands away from his silverware and laced them together over his plate. When he spoke, his tone was carefully neutral, planed completely empty of expression. “I’m mostly good at putting down what others call up. We can’t all be healers and protectors, after all.”

 

Genji’s answering grin was tight and sharp and just short of feral. “Good to know.”

 

“ _ What _ do you think you’re  _ doing? _ ” Hanzo growled at him in Japanese, willing Genji to meet his eyes and failing utterly. He and the ranger were locked in the sort of staredown that, from past experience with his brother and individuals his brother decided to tangle with, would invariably end in someone bleeding on the floor.

 

“Establishing some healthy boundaries.” Genji replied airily, in the same language, before dropping back into English. “So I assume that this...thing, this  _ naayéé _ , is something someone called up, then?”

 

The ranger gazed at his brother with a stare as flatly expressionless as his voice had been, his face almost terrifyingly empty of expression, and Hanzo felt all the hair on the back of his neck trying to rise at once, pinioned between the pair of them. Then he glanced away and blinked, something that wasn’t anywhere near a smile curled one corner of his mouth, and the danger receded. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the tension bleeding out of the others, though that might have had something to do with the little silver-blue orb hovering over Zenyatta’s shoulder.

 

“To be honest, we’re not  _ entirely _ sure.” Jesse finally replied, turn his attention back to the table -- back to Hanzo, actually, and his heart and stomach executed an impressively complex gymnastics routine in response. “The  _ naayéé _ do not, in general, respond to the summons of anything but another, more powerful one of their own kind, or more likely their own whims. This particular thing -- “

 

“The Serpent-Wolf,” Hanzo heard himself say in a ridiculously steady voice given the contortions taking place inside his thoracic cavity.

 

“Yes.” He paused, visibly considering what he wanted to say and how to say it. “I’m fairly certain nothing called the Serpent-Wolf into this world against its will. Unfortunately, that means it came here for a reason. Also unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that reason’s you, darlin’.”

 

“Yes.” Hanzo’s mouth was abruptly as dry as the desert hardpack in August and his stomach was actively trying to crawl up his throat. “I’d gotten that impression.”

 

“I know I asked you this before -- and I believed you then and I still do -- but now I really need to know the whole and unvarnished truth.” He reached out and touched two fingers to the back of Hanzo’s hand, sending a wave of slowly multiplying shivers up his arm and down the length of his spine. “This ain’t just for pretty, is it?”

 

“Hanzo,” Genji hissed. “You do not have to answer that.”

 

“No. I do.” Hanzo swallowed, with some difficulty, around the sudden obstruction sitting just below his larynx, cutting off his ability to breathe. “It is not. It was meant to be an anchor -- a spirit-anchor for a being that would otherwise have no place in the physical world.”

 

The ranger, he noted distantly, did not seem surprised by that intelligence. “But there’s no bond. Wasn’t any until the Serpent-Wolf forced itself inside.”

 

Hanzo shook his head and fought for the ability to speak around the pained constriction of his throat, the prickle of tears in the corners of his eyes. “No. It -- I...was not meant to bear that honor, though I did not know it at the time.”

 

“ _ Aniki. _ ”

 

The ranger’s hands enfolded his. “Can you start at the beginnin’, darlin’?”

  
“Yes.” Hanzo closed his eyes, said his farewells to hope, and began. “My family tells the story of two great dragon brothers…”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first of at least two chapters specifically dedicated to those of you who a) wanted Hanzo to be okay after Chapter Six and b) also wanted me to hurt him.
> 
> YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

_ My family tells an ancient legend of two dragon brothers: Minamikaze, the Dragon of the South Wind, and Kitakaze, the Dragon of the North Wind. Together they ruled the skies with might and wisdom, governed the courts of the seasons, and upheld balance and harmony in the heavens. _

 

_ But they were also brothers and, as all brothers do, sometimes they squabbled about matters both great and petty. Minamikaze was strong and wise and proud of his many gifts and virtues, the beauty of his palace in the heavens, the quality of his courtiers and the elegance of his concubines. Kitakaze was fierce and cunning and proud of his many skills and his independence, of the wild beauty of the mountains where he rested his heavy coils, of the equally wild spirits who worshipped him as he deemed fit. From time to time, Kitakaze would call upon his brother in his high palace among the clouds and, whenever he came, Minamikaze’s many courtiers would flutter through the halls in his wake, whisper and hiss behind their fans that they could hardly believe such a crude and unrefined being could truly be the brother of their master much less a rightful ruler of the heavens. From time to time, Minamikaze would call upon his brother among the mountains he called home and, whenever he came, the spirits who served Kitakaze would whisper and hiss through the branches of the trees that they could hardly believe such an arrogant and waspish creature could truly be the brother of their master much less a rightful ruler of the heavens. Thusly did many years pass, with each brother ruling his half of their kingdom while those closest to them dripped poison into their ears. _

 

_ Even our clan does not preserve how the worst and final quarrel between them began, but we do know its cause: which of them could better rule over their land, a kingdom whole and undivided. No one knows who struck the first blow but we do know this: their resentment of one another turned to murderous rage and their violent struggle darkened the skies. Typhoons lashed the seas and flooded the shores, capsizing boats and drowning fishermen, starving those who waited for their return. Blizzards howled among the mountains, burying villages in avalanche and withering crops in unseasonable cold, so that famine stalked all the land. Lightning fell upon temples and shrines, palaces and farmhouses, and the fires that followed added to the woes of those suffering in the shadow of the raging brothers. In the end, the Dragon of the South Wind struck down his brother, who fell to the tortured Earth, shattering the land in the throes of his death. _

 

_ Minamikaze had triumphed but, as time passed, he realized the extent of his folly and the sweetness of victory turned to ash. The obsequies of his courtiers, no matter how delicious, could not take the place of his brother’s openhearted companionship. He knew too late that his heart had been poisoned by their lies and their slander and had only his own hand to blame for the murder of the one who had always known and loved him best. Burning with shame, he fled his palace in the heavens and wandered aimlessly in bitterness and sorrow, his grief throwing the whole of the world into discord. _

 

_ One day a stranger, clad in the cloak of a wandering monk, called up to him as he wept in the skies above the mountain-cradled lake his brother called home and asked, “Dragon lord, why are you so distraught?” _

 

_ And Minamikaze replied, “Seeking power, I killed my brother -- but, without him, I am lost.” _

 

_ The stranger replied, his voice gentle with compassion and soft with comfort, “You have inflicted wounds upon yourself, but now you must heal. Walk the Earth on two feet, as I do. Find value in humility and in humanity, and then you will find peace.” _

 

_ Minamikaze heard the kindness and the wisdom in the stranger’s words, and knelt upon the ground at his feet. For the first time, he was able to clearly see the world around him, the consequences of his own actions, and seeing he knew what he must do: he became human. The stranger revealed himself as Kitakaze, fallen no longer and healed of many wounds, the most terrible of which was the loss of his brother’s love, made whole by the hand that inflicted it. Reunited, the two set out to rebuild what they had once destroyed, make right what they had once put wrong. _

 

*

 

“And to make a much longer story filled with an absolutely incredible number of begats short,” Genji interjected, “about the time Minamikaze and Kitakaze started tooling around on two legs, they also came to the realization that there was a  _ lot _ to be said for engaging in semi-divine-being with benefits relationships.”

 

“ _ Genji. _ ” Hanzo growled in what he hoped was a properly quelling tone.

 

“Which is, in fact, how they came to be married to the shaman sisters who had scraped Kitakaze out of the crater he’d made on impact and stitched him back together again.” Genji continued, not obviously quelled at all, and it was all Hanzo could do not to put him in a headlock until someone could get a roll of duct tape. “Nature took its course and, well.”

“The children of Minamikaze and Sakuya, Kitakaze and Tsuya, were the founders of our clan, born of the union between two worlds.” Hanzo grabbed his brother’s knee under the table, found the pressure points, and applied a judicious amount of force; Genji’s mouth, finally getting the hint, snapped shut. “They were...not entirely human themselves, being able to walk between the courts of the spirit world and the realms of men, the better to carry out their parents’ will. The brothers had inflicted great harm on all the worlds in their violence but they were wise enough to know that undoing all that they had done was not only their own task but the work of generations yet to be born. Minamikaze and Kitakaze lived long lives but their human shells were still mortal and when they passed from it within hours of each other, they were born again into their true kingdom as the dragon princes they were. Thus did they give their children, and their grandchildren, and all who would come into the world bearing the humble name they chose for themselves a mighty gift to aid them in their struggles -- not only the blood of dragons in their veins, but a companion of the spirit to protect and counsel them.”

 

The ranger’s grip on his hand tightened a fraction; he could only imagine how badly he was failing to control his expression because, when he spoke, his tone was surpassingly gentle. “That’s what this was supposed to be.”

 

It took Hanzo a moment to force his tongue to move. “Yes.”

 

“Wait.” Hana said at the same moment Lucio whispered, “ _ Holy mother of no way. _ ”

 

Genji sighed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s exactly what you’re thinking.”

 

“That tattoo. On your back. Is an actual dragon.” Lucio sounded as though he were saying the words aloud in a desperate, doomed effort to make himself  _ not _ believe them.

 

“Yep.” Genji replied. “You can let go of my leg now, Hanzo.”

 

He did so, and wrapped the liberated arm around his slowly churning stomach.

 

“I’d say  _ no freaking way _ but I’m afraid we’ve left that pretty far behind.” Lucio admitted. “Can we see it?”

 

“...Maybe?” Genji flicked a look at him out of the corner of his eye. “Later. Definitely later.”

 

“So,” Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad asked, because of course he did, “why don’t  _ you _ have one?”

 

“ _ Gabe. _ ” Ranger McCree growled in a near-duplicate of his own quelling tone; Genji just growled.

 

“No. He has a salient point. I was vulnerable because there was no bond, though I was prepared -- “ Hanzo stopped, considered, started again. “For hundreds of years, our family followed the command of our ancestors and carried out the task of repairing the harm they had done. Using the gifts at our command, we advised and counseled rulers and warlords, we kept the shrines of our ancestors and those gods and spirits who acted in accord with them, we fought the monsters and demons their violence had permitted entry into the world, and we gave peace and rest to the anguished ghosts of those who perished during the dark and troubled years. Our family was respected and honored for our work, and for our skills, and for our gifts. But things, as they always do, changed.”

 

“More specifically, the arts our family practiced were outlawed as superstition and banned under threat of a number of unpleasant punishments. When given the choice between sinking into genteel poverty and irrelevance and outlawry our several-times-great-grandparents chose outlawry. They might have been a  _ tiny bit _ bitter.” Genji’s tone was decidedly wry. “Unfortunately, transitioning from well-respected clan of  _ craftspeople _ , to use the local term, to a greatly feared clan of organized criminals had a rather significant side-effect. We fell out of favor with our own ancestors.”

 

“For nearly three centuries our dragon-kin would not answer us. They refused our prayers, turned away our offerings, ignored our pleas. We still etched an open bond into our skin in the hope that it would one day be fulfilled, but it never was. Parts of the family ceased to believe that we had ever been dragons at all while others used the tales for intimidation and threat.” Hanzo fixed his gaze at a point on the far wall, letting his eyes trace the pattern of the hanging, not wishing to meet the ranger’s eyes and see what was written there. “This might have gone on until the last of the dragon’s blood drained from us entirely, had it not been for our grandfather and his brother. Uncle Toshiro was of a scholarly and spiritual nature, and when he asked his brother our grandfather to release him from his obligations to the clan that he might pursue a sacred calling, he was permitted to go. Kijuro, our grandfather, knew he would never be happy otherwise and he loved his brother enough to grant him his freedom. Toshiro withdrew into the mountains near Hanamura, the city our clan called home, and rediscovered the ways we had lost in the shrine that had once been ours, at the knee of the hermit shaman who tended it. And he was the first to receive an answer from our ancestors in generations. The message he received was this: the world was breaking again and it would need dragons, as well, to protect and restore it.”

 

“Our grandfather wasn’t what you could call overly well-supplied with imagination but he knew what that meant well enough: our ancestors wanted us to go straight. Fortunately for them, Grandpa Kijuro pretty much wanted to get out of the organized crime business while the getting was good, too, and he went about the task of sweet-talking the elder siblings and the heads of the sub-families and figuring out which assets to convert to legitimate businesses and which to sell off and to whom and who to put in charge of what. It was pretty much the work of his most vigorous years, it wasn’t easy or smooth or completely without pain and violence, but he inculcated the necessity of it in all his potential heirs and into his only child, our mother.” Genji said  _ our mother _ like some people might say  _ Satan himself _ but Hanzo elected to let it ride unremarked. “He was practically on his deathbed when Toshiro sent word that the ancestors had accepted his efforts and that his daughter was even then carrying the child who would bring the dragons back to the Shimada clan.”

 

“You?” Ana asked.

 

“Him.”

 

“Our grandfather died four years after I was born. Genji was only a baby at the time.” Hanzo’s gaze did another circuit of the pattern, seeking calm, emptiness, emotional distance. “Uncle Toshiro came down from the mountains for the funeral and to take me in hand, to begin training me in the arts I would need to master. He was younger than our grandfather by some years but was an old man himself, and I think he knew even then that I would be his last student. I could already perceive the world beyond the world -- the spirit of Shimada Castle was a sad and beautiful woman who would sit by me at night and sing me to sleep when I was restless, the gardens and the city were  _ alive _ with things only I could see or touch. What I had been given as a gift, he had gained through study and discipline, which he shared with me.”

 

“Which is to say when he wasn’t studying a rigorous schedule of way-above-average academics with the best private tutors our mother could find, he was studying weirdass magical and religious esoterica with our ancient, crusty great-uncle. When he wasn’t practicing the sword -- with  _ actual swords _ , mind you, not  _ kendo _ \-- was practicing the bow, and when he wasn’t practicing either of those two things he was working on his calligraphy or how to make six dozen different kinds of demon-chasing charms or learning how to paint  _ sumi-e _ well enough to get into  _ art college _ or how to sing troubled spirits to rest or approximately six million other things that he was expected to know how to do  _ perfectly _ before he could approach the dragon brothers’ shrine and beg their forgiveness and ask them to come back.” Genji made no effort to keep either the exasperation or the bitterness out of his tone. “I was thoroughly convinced for at least a couple years that he was actually a vampire because I almost never saw his face in broad daylight and I thought our parents were keeping the terrible truth from me until I was old enough to deal with it.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hana opening her mouth. “For the record: I am  _ also _ not a vampire. I am...not anything.”

 

“That seems kinda unlikely, darlin’.” The ranger’s tone was gentle.

 

“And yet it is the truth.” He was mildly astonished that his voice wavered only slightly. “Uncle Toshiro was very, very old when he passed -- I was twenty-one. Shortly after his funeral, I received word from the keeper of the dragon brothers’ shrine that everyone enclosed there had dreamed of our coming…”

 

*

 

They were not quite fifty yards from the parking lot at the base of the mountain when Genji started complaining.

 

“How could you  _ do _ this to me, Hanzo?” He asked in the plaintive tones of a man most cruelly and brutally wronged by one held dear to his heart. “ _ How?” _

 

“You’ll survive the cardio.” Hanzo replied, utterly without mercy, as he started up the next flight of steps on the long climb to the shrine. “You should probably also save your breath. The air is going to be a bit thin where we’re going.”

 

“Heartless,” Genji whined. “ _ Absolutely heartless. _ Do you have any idea where I could be right now?”

 

“No,” Hanzo lied and lengthened his stride slightly. “ Though I’m certain you’re going to tell me.”

 

“I could be on a  _ yacht _ in the middle of the wine-dark Adriatic Sea -- “ Genji began in tones of high melodrama.

“Aegean. I’m reasonably certain it’s the Aegean that all the Greek poets describe as ‘wine-dark’.” Hanzo observed meditatively because he, at least, hadn’t slept through either World Cultures  _ or _ Advanced Poetic Forms In World Literature.

 

“ _ Whatever. _ And not just  _ any _ yacht, the world’s largest, most expensive yacht --  _ the yacht has its own private plane, Hanzo. _ It’s practically an aircraft carrier upholstered in nudity and excess. And do you know to whom that yacht belongs, oh my dearest brother?” He could nearly  _ hear _ the gesticulations accompanying the recitation, though he didn’t look back to witness them.

 

He also knew the answer that question. “Oh your  _ only _ brother. And, no, I do not.” 

 

“ _ Kyrion and Konstancia Nagata, that’s who! _ ” Genji howled, his despair echoing down the valley. “ _ Who are turning eighteen this weekend! I could be the meat in a kinky Nagata twin sandwich right now!” _

 

“Genji,” Hanzo replied, repressively, because otherwise he was going to start laughing and that would completely ruin any attempt at wise brotherly counsel, “Kyrion Nagata is completely not your type -- “

 

“Maybe not but his  _ sister _ is!” Genji wailed again, the ancient, weathered torii lining the ancient, weathered stone stairs catching his voice and amplifying it. “Have you ever even  _ seen _ her on the dance floor? She moves like bones and ligaments are completely optional flexion devices and those legs Hanzo those legs and how do you even  _ know _ Kyrion Nagata?”

 

“I actually  _ read _ the briefings the security office puts out.” Hanzo rolled his eyes heavenward. “Which is how I know that their father is balls deep in the Russian mafia and underwater in debt to a number of mainland Chinese smuggling operations and that is likely why either or both of his children are attempting to ensnare one or more heirs to a family-run  _ zaibatsu _ \-- because  _ we _ wouldn’t let our in-laws be murdered by testy smugglers who want their investments back.”

 

“Oh,  _ sure _ , take all the  _ fun _ out of the idea of a threesome with unnaturally flexible twins.” Genji sulked in a transport of despond. “I handle my own contraceptives and prophylactics, you know.”

 

“I’m reasonably certain a very polite and well-mannered kidnapping for ransom would also not be beyond the bounds of possibility, particularly if they spend the the entire duration of it fucking your brains out.” Hanzo replied, tartly. “Oh, and for the record: mother asked me not to leave you alone with either of them for longer than fifteen seconds if it was within my power to do so and look! It was totally within my power this weekend.”

 

“ _ Dammit, Hanzo!” _

 

They walked in silence for some time after that, partly because Genji, resentfully fuming, refused to allow himself to be baited into further conversation, partly because the trail itself became genuinely steep enough to constitute a vigorous cardio workout. The steps were genuinely old beyond the telling of it, carved out of the bones of the mountain, worn as much by time as the passage of feet, crumbling in some places and slick with moss in others. They both had to apply some concentration to their footing lest they enjoy a far less controlled descent and by the time they reached the point where the trail widened out along the brow of the mountainside, both were more than a little ready for a rest stop.

 

“You’ll survive the cardio, huh?” Genji asked, half-mocking, as they both shucked off their packs and slumped down in the lee of an enormous boulder, fighting to catch their collective breath.

 

“I’m reasonably sure  _ that _ was why Uncle Toshiro decided to just stay in Hanamura.” Hanzo admitted, rolling the tension out of his shoulders as he set down his pack. “Here, lay out the blanket…”

 

Genji, for a pleasant change, did as he was asked without argument, spreading out the plastic-lined picnic blanket liberated from the cherry blossom viewing party supplies on the flattest part of the trail and then flopping dramatically down on it. Hanzo extracted the food he’d packed for the hike, deposited Genji’s share on his chest, and settled down at his knee. “Let me have your legs.”

 

Genji looked up from the contents of his lunch box but didn’t argue, particularly once Hanzo was massaging the lactic acid buildup out of his calves. “ _ Ohhhhh _ , I  _ knew _ there was a reason I still liked you even though you do stuff like this to me.”

 

“You used to  _ enjoy _ doing stuff like this with me.” He switched legs and rolled his eyes a little at his brother’s orgiastic moaning.

 

“Yeah, when  _ I _ was  _ twelve _ and  _ you _ were only allowed outside if you were doing something that involved hopping one legged across the obstacle course or walking blindfolded through a forest with only a water bottle and a knife or hiking up the side of a mountain without any marked trails and an eighty pound backpack.” Genji replied around a mouthful of onigiri. “I’m not twelve anymore, Hanzo.”

 

“Clearly.” Hanzo replied dryly and poured himself a cup of tea from the thermos. “You’re attracting curious spirits with the power of your abs, by the way, close your shirt.”

 

“Let them get an eyeful, it’s a glory they’ll never see again once this weekend is over.” Genji propped himself up on his elbows and accepted the cup handed to him. “You could have had any dozen or two of our ass-sucking relatives up here with you right now, you know.”

 

“I know.” Hanzo contemplated the contents of his own box, all of which had seemed quite appetizing only a handful of hours before. “And if I’d wanted my ass sucked all the way there and back again, I would have asked one of them.”

 

“Of course it’s much more enjoyable to torture me.” Genji tossed off his tea and lay back again, twitching his legs out of his lap. 

 

Hanzo discovered his appetite taking an abrupt and total leave, and closed his box. “You could have said no, and I would have respected that.”

 

“But  _ mother _ wouldn’t have and, honestly, even dragging myself up the side of a mountain and spending the weekend in a place without wifi or running water is preferable to putting up with her in full blown passive-aggressive dragon-mama mode.” Genji pulled out his phone. “Holy shit, I’ve still got connection. Who would’ve guessed?”

 

“I’m reasonably certain they’ve got running water now.” Hanzo replied, carefully stretching his own legs before the post-exertion cramps could set in.

 

Genji snorted and looked up from the screen. “Good, because standing under a waterfall is absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to bathing tonight. Why did you even ask me, you  _ knew _ I was going to hate everything about this. Honestly, Hanzo.”

 

Hanzo stretched the length of his left leg and addressed his words to the blanket. “Because you’re my brother and, no matter what happens in the next few days, after this everything is going to be different, one way or another.”

Genji was silent for a long, long moment. Hanzo closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensation of his muscles loosening, the birds twittering among the trees, the rustle of small forest creatures in the undergrowth beyond the trail, the spirits singing their wordless songs on the breeze as it curled around the shoulder of the mountain. Then, in a tone positively  _ freighted _ with malicious glee, Genji whispered, “You’re  _ afraid. _ ”

 

Hanzo sat up so quickly his hamstrings complained. “ _ Really _ ?”

 

Genji pointed at him and outright  _ cackled _ in perfectly spiteful amusement. “You  _ are. _ Hanzo Perfect In Every Way Shimada is  _ fucking scared. _ I  _ never _ thought I would live to see this day, never in a million years, hold still, I need to commemorate this moment -- “

 

Hanzo lunged at him but, as it turned out, Genji was just a hair faster and more flexible and rolled easily out of reach and to his feet.

 

“ _ Dammit, Genji. _ ” Hanzo growled and his brother laughed again, not even pretending to hide the mocking edge to it.

 

“Now  _ that _ sounds familiar.” Genji snapped off at least a few pictures and tucked his phone away, eyes alight with venomous cheer. “Now I will always remember the day my excellent-in-all-things elder brother displayed a fleeting trace element of imperfection. My life is complete.” His grin slipped back a notch from  _ punchable _ to merely annoying. “Okay,  _ aniki _ , that was the best laugh I’ve had in ages so when this whole thing turns out to be the longest long con Uncle Toshiro and Grandpa ever ran, I promise I won’t make fun of you too hard, okay?”

 

Hanzo closed his eyes, breathed in peace, breathed out the desire to shove his  _ complete asshole _ little brother off the side of the scenic overlook, and said, “We should go. We have a few more hours of walking left and I would like to be at the shrine well before nightfall.”

 

“But of course.” 

 

Genji went to collect his pack and remained in an obnoxiously cheerful good mood for the remainder of the hike, undimmed by the sudden summer squall that came pouring down the valley that soaked them both before they could reach the travelers’ shelter at the base of the final rise, or the steep final climb itself. Hanzo chose to regard that as a blessing instead of a harbinger of worse to come primarily because his digestive tract had already tied itself into an impressively complex knotwork sequence and he rather doubted he could survive his circulatory system getting into the act. The sun was a handspan above the western mountains by the time they reached the last set of stairs cut into the edge of the wooded plateau holding the dragon brothers’ shrine and found the priestess-shaman that kept it waiting for them at the top, beneath the torii that marked the boundary between the world as they knew it and the world that was yet to come.

 

She was almost impossibly tiny, her hair pure white and knotted into a bun at the base of her skull, her back deeply bowed and her face deeply lined with age, but the eyes that looked out at them were bright, a shade of brown so pale they were nearly golden, like those of their mother and late grandfather, sharp and knowing. She bowed in greeting as they came to the top of the steps, the westering sunlight gilding her hair, the sculpted wooden cap of the staff she leaned on, the almost impossibly snowy whiteness of her robe and shawl. “Welcome, young masters. It has been many years since the heirs of my clan have made this pilgrimage. We are pleased to receive you.”

 

Hanzo stopped on the topmost step and bowed deeply over his hands. “It was our honor to make this journey and our honor to pass the gate of the gods, to return the service of the clan to our ancestors.” He rose, and smiled. “It is good to finally meet you, great-grandmother.”

 

“Ah, child.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, the skin of her palm paper-fine. “Let me look at you. Toshiro told me a great deal about you -- “ The tip of her staff came around and struck Genji’s shins with serpentine speed; he yelped and almost tumbled back down the stairs and Hanzo just barely managed to swallow a laugh, “and also about you, Genji. Come, the girl who helps me will be making supper soon and you two should settle in…”

 

She set off on the path that led along the perimeter fence, away from the central lane to the shrine itself. There, tucked away in a corner and screened from view by its own fence and a thin stand of bamboo, was her elegant little house and garden, the stone path leading to the covered verandah passing through it. As the approached, the door slid open and their grandmother’s attendant -- a woman likely old enough to be their mother -- greeted them with a bow and helped her inside. “Girl, show my grandsons to their room and to the bathhouse. Grandsons, bathe. You smell like you just climbed a mountain. Then come talk to me and we will eat.”

 

The walls in the northern all-purpose room had already been arranged to make two bedrooms -- the “girl,” who quietly gave her name as Miss Hayata, showed them to the western-facing room, its outer shoji open to allow the storm-cooled, rain-and-forest scented breeze entry, the spring fed pond and the surrounding water garden perfectly framed between them. Two futons were laid out next to one another; a set of shelves and hooks for personal belongings and a small chabudai and a selection of cushions occupied the remaining space. Genji glanced around, dumped his pack, and asked, “Mind if I call dibs on the bath?”

 

“Not at all.” Hanzo rather felt he could use a few minutes to unpack, dispose of his uneaten lunch before it began to smell, and have a minor panic attack before sitting down to eat dinner with the teacher of his teacher. Fortunately, there were jewel-bright fish in the pond willing to help with at least part of the disposal and he strongly suspected the squirrels would take care of the rest. He hung his ritual garments to air,  selected a fresh change of clothes, extracted the scroll case he had carried with him from the kamidana in Shimada Castle from its waterproof covering, and stashed the rest of his belongings on his half of the shelves. The panic attack, however, refused to unknot itself from the inner workings of his entrails and he resigned himself to politely picking at dinner.

 

Genji, miraculously, didn’t take forever in the bath and hadn’t used all the towels. By the time Hanzo himself emerged, dinner was definitely perfuming the air.

 

_ Be calm, _ murmured the voice of reason as he hurried in the direction from whence those delicious smells were emanating,  _ be calm. If she didn’t think you were ready, if she hadn’t received a sign you were ready, if you were not ready, she would not have summoned you. Be calm. Or, if you can’t be calm, at least don’t throw up, because there’s no way that’s not an inauspicious omen. _

 

The dining room was in the furthest southern end of the house, to take advantage of the last of the light lingering in the heavens, supplemented by small lamps situated in each corner and one in the center of the much larger chabudai. Only three places were laid and Miss Hayata was already bringing out the first tray -- tiny, elegantly composed bowls of hiyashi chuka -- so Hanzo hurriedly seated himself. 

 

Grandmother Sumiko clucked her tongue at him. “Tardy.” Genji snickered. “Put away that phone or I will put it away for you and stop laughing at your brother’s misfortune.”

 

“Just a moment, grandmother, I’m -- “ Hanzo did not actually  _ see _ Grandmother Sumiko pick up her chopsticks but he did have the opportunity to appreciate the speed with which she used them to snatch the phone out of Genji’s hands. “ _ Hey. _ ”

 

Grandmother Sumiko scrutinized whatever was going on with a certain critical eye and Genji, for the first time in years, actually, visibly blushed. “That is an extraordinarily flexible young woman who is wasting her kami-given talents on amateur softcorn porn. If she ever wishes to fulfill her potential, do send her to me.” Then she powered the device down and slid it into the depths of her robes. “You can have that back when you’re ready to leave, Genji-kun.”

 

Genji turned the full force of his best this-is-all-your-fault glare on him and mouthed  _ I hate you _ with elaborate accompanying body language. Since neither of those things were new, Hanzo shrugged insouciantly and mouthed back  _ sorry _ as insincerely as the situation allowed. If Grandmother Sumiko noticed the exchange, she mercifully forebore to comment on it, and Miss Hayata returned bearing the libations, which turned out to be wonderfully chilled umeshu. That, at least, put Genji in a somewhat better mood almost instantly.

 

“Tell me of yourself, Genji-kun,” Grandmother Sumiko said, once they had had an opportunity to sample the provender.

 

“I thought we came here for you to talk to  _ him. _ ” It was not quite a question, or an accusation, but partook of the most potentially insulting aspects of both and it was all Hanzo could do not to throw his still mostly-full appetizer plate across the table at him.

 

“If I have a question to ask of Hanzo, I assure you I will do so.” Grandmother Sumiko replied, holding her chopsticks in a manner that suggested potential violence in the offing. “Now, tell me about yourself or I’ll unscrew your head and dip it out with a soup ladle.”

 

Genji, unexpectedly, grinned his most winning grin. “I think I’m beginning to like you, Grandmother.”

 

Miss Hayata arrived to take away the appetizer plates and bring new ones, periodically refreshing the umeshu, and Genji and their grandmother chattered back and forth through grilled tofu with vinegared vegetables, a perfectly outstanding miso soup, fried eggplant swimming in a coolly refreshing marinade, and chazuke with umeboshi, a circumstance that allowed Hanzo to eat almost nothing and avoid a lecture at the same time, for which he was profoundly grateful. Dessert was an artfully arranged fan of sliced peaches and watermelon that evoked the image of a bird in flight served with cold sencha flavored with peach and cucumber slices. Miss Hayata shot him a worried look as she took away his last, virtually untouched plate.

 

“Very well, Genji, you have amused me much more than I suspected you would this evening.” Grandmother Sumiko reached into her robe and tossed his phone back. “Don’t make me regret giving you this, and by regret I mean I don’t want to hear any questionable noises coming from your bedroom after you think everyone else is asleep. I’m an old woman and these walls are thin. Shoo.”

 

“Thank you, Grandmother.” He offered her a perfectly correct bow, possibly just to prove he could do it, and then dropped a kiss on her cheek, eyes twinkling impishly. “I promise I won’t terrorize your household in the night.”

 

“Good boy.” He fled and Grandmother Sumiko pinned Hanzo back to his cushions without even looking at him. “Not you. Sit. Have some more of that excellent sencha if you’re not going to eat.”

 

Chastened, Hanzo sipped his tea and attempted to avoid his grandmother’s eyes as she turned her full attention to him for the first time. He did not entirely succeed and once she caught him, she declined to let him go. “That one is...angry.”

 

“Yes.” Hanzo agreed, the knots in his stomach reconfiguring themselves slightly.

 

“At you?” Grandmother Sumiko asked, regarding him steadily.

 

“At everything.” Hanzo replied, and sat his cup down, regretting everything he’d put in his mouth all evening. “Myself and the situation included.”

 

“And yet you brought him with you.” She sipped from her own cup and, mercifully, looked away.

 

“My options were limited. Given the choice between the brother who hates me and the relatives who only bother because they want something from me, at least the hate is honest.” He blinked until his eyes stopped stinging and looked out into the garden, where the solar-powered tōrō were coming to life in the deep blue twilight.

 

“You could have come alone.” Gently.

 

“I didn’t want to.” He laced his fingers together to give his hands something to do. “Did you?”

 

“No.” Grandmother Sumiko admitted, after a moment. “Worried?”

 

“Oh, yes.” Hanzo took a sip of tea and forced himself to swallow.

 

“Good. If you weren’t  _ I’d _ be worried.” With a certain dry amusement. “Ready?”

 

_ No. _ “I must be.” The tea was definitely a mistake. “When do we begin?”

 

“Tomorrow at first light.” He glanced at her, surprised. “Don’t look at me like that, this isn’t the masochism tango. You climbed a mountain today and you haven’t eaten enough to keep a bird alive. The purpose of the endeavor is to  _ succeed _ at it, not collapse from physical and mental exhaustion halfway through. Tonight you do nothing but  _ rest. _ ”

 

“Thank you, Grandmother.” He found a genuine enough smile to offer her. “May I go?”

 

She waved him off. “Go. Make sure your angry idiot brother shuts down at a decent hour, too, because I genuinely don’t care if he’s not a morning person.”

 

“I will.” He rose, bowed, and made his way back to the bedroom, thinking fixedly about nothing.

 

Genji had rearranged the room somewhat in his absence, moving the futon he’d chosen to the opposite side and putting the table between them, along with a barrier consisting of the contents of his pack, most of which were portable forms of electronic entertainment. Hanzo heroically resisted the temptation to step on a few of the more delicate-seeming ones as he slipped in and slid the shoji door closed behind him. His brother did not look up from the device in his hands or otherwise deign to acknowledge his existence as he prepared for bed, earbuds firmly in place, not even when Hanzo turned out the lamp on his side of the room. He simply reached out and thumbed off his own light, plunging the room into sickly electronic screen lit semi-darkness.

 

Hanzo wondered, as he tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in, what would happen if he threw a pillow at Genji’s head and asked to talk. Brutal realism forced him to conclude  _ nothing good _ given the single-minded intensity of focus his brother was giving to ignoring him. An argument, in all likelihood, of the kind that Genji could bring when he was of a mind to use any possible vulnerability against him, his words placed with delicate precision to cut deep. Thus it was that he rolled to the side facing the wall and whispered, “You were right. I am afraid. I wish I could tell you.”

 

He did not, despite the exertions of the day, sleep particularly well. He had spent cumulative years of his life training in the wild places still to be found in Japan, had slept in tents and under the stars and, on at least one occasion notable for its unpleasantness, hanging on the side of a cliff strapped to a nylon-and-aluminum base platform, but for some reason he could not make himself relax in the freshly laundered bedding on the sweet-smelling tatami while safe under the roof of his grandmother’s house. He couldn’t even blame it on Genji: he had shut whatever he’d been doing down well before midnight, rolled over, and gone directly to sleep. He wasn’t even snoring. Neither were the night noises so disturbingly different as to be a reason for his restlessness: the spirits sang to him no matter where he was, city, castle, or country and, under normal circumstances, and they were enough to soothe him no matter how deep his physical discomfort or mental disquiet. The bath had actually assuaged the majority of the bodily aches occasioned by the hike and his body was, in fact,  _ completely and utterly prepared _ to rest.

 

His mind, however, was skittering around like a howler monkey that had stumbled into a meth lab and refused to obey either the demands of physical exhaustion or silent pleas for mercy because it was  _ late _ and he had to get up  _ early _ and he already seriously doubted his ability to settle a bitter family quarrel three centuries in the cherishing without trying to do so on twenty minutes of sleep. In fact, his tweaker brain was taking  _ positive delight _ in going over and over and  _ over _ all the possible ways this could go wrong, every conceivable misstep, every way in which he could  _ fail _ . And there were, in fact, multiple potential points of failure, each and every one of which could be laid at his feet.  _ Would be _ laid at his feet.

 

_ You have been preparing to do this thing for nearly your entire life, _ the voice of reason finally hissed, sounding exasperated almost beyond its own nature. _ You LITERALLY CANNOT POSSIBLY be more ready. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP. _

 

_ That is what I’m afraid of _ , he replied but he did, in end, sleep for at least a few hours. He snapped instantly awake at the gentle hiss of the shoji sliding open and Miss Hayata’s soft voice whispering, “Young master?”

 

“I am awake,” He whispered in reply and reached for his yukata. “If my brother can sleep, it is best to let him.”

 

“As you wish,” Miss Hayata whispered and withdrew while he dressed and carefully folded his ritual garments into the carry-all he’d brought for that purpose, sliding the scroll case in alongside.

 

The sky outside was growing pale with false dawn as she led him out into the garden, along the path that led down the side of the plateau, the steps narrow and somewhat treacherous with dew. Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of rushing water and was not surprised when, a few moments later, the trees thinned on the bank of swift-moving stream, itself flowing forth from a deep green pool at the base of of a silver thread of waterfall. Grandmother Sumiko waited just outside the edge of the waterfall’s spray on the bank, a single enormous water-cut slab of stone, smoothed by centuries, holding a lantern on a pole to light his way.

 

And now there was no more time in which to harbor fear, or doubt.

 

He undid the ties he used to tame his hair while he slept; unbound, it fell past his waist. He slipped out of his yukata, folded it neatly, and stepped onto the water-smoothed stone. The water, even in summer, was stunningly cold and rendered colder by the predawn breeze. He embraced that chill and allowed it to sink past the surface of his skin, to cool the feverish racing of his thoughts, to wash away any lingering traces of weariness in mind or body. Miss Hayata handed him a cloth with which to dry himself and his grandmother the garments with which to clothe himself and further sprinkled a handful of salt over his head and shoulders once he had done so. A little smile curled the corners of her mouth and he found it drawing an answering expression from his own.  _ One can never be  _ **_too_ ** _ pure when approaching the gods. _

 

Genji was still asleep as they passed through the garden again -- or, if he wasn’t, he was doing a perfectly excellent imitation. Hanzo firmly ignored the little pang that gave him, the hope that his brother might wake early enough to follow him all the way to the shrine a small one at best, and he did need to rest. He crushed even more firmly the insidious, invidious thought that followed:  _ he would not go with you even if he were awake, he does not believe in this, he never has, and he never will -- you are a fool to think otherwise. _

 

_ He will believe when I am done. _ Hanzo held that thought as a shield before his mind and his heart as they cleansed their hands and mouths at the purification fountain, as Grandmother Sumiko led the way along the lane between the palely glowing lanterns, as they stopped to offer prayers at the shrines of the smaller gods, as Grandmother Sumiko opened the doors of the haiden and led the way inside. The hall was longer than it was wide, the air within still and cool and rich with the scent of the ancient, lovingly tended wood that made up the floor, the internal pillars, the altar whose face was etched with the image of the entwined dragons. As one they knelt and bowed before it, touching foreheads to the floor in full supplication, offering all honor and as one they rose to make the offerings: a bowl of rice, a plate of cakes, bowls of salt and water, a bottle of sake. Grandmother Sumiko alone spoke the prayers, unchanged in form for centuries, and she alone approached the door to the inner sanctuary where the shintai of the brother dragons lay enshrined. Hanzo rose and followed her once the way was opened, the scroll case he had carried from Hanamura in the crook of his arm, and stepped into the presence of the gods.

 

The slender pinnacle of stone where Minamikaze and Kitakaze had touched the Earth to become human, where they had left humanity behind to return to their place in the heavens, was wrapped in hundreds of layers of silk, blue and green, golden and copper, to conceal it from human eyes, bound around its base with a shimenawa as thick as a large man’s arm. Sitting before it, on an elegantly carved platform specifically for the purpose, sat a yamatogoto, the dark wood of its construction glowing in the light of the inner sanctuary lamps Grandmother Sumiko brought to life, strings gleaming like the exposed edge of a blade. She touched his shoulder in passing as she withdrew and closed the doors of the inner sanctuary behind her.

 

Hanzo knelt, laid the scroll case on the platform next to the instrument, and for a moment simply breathed. Once begun, what came next could not be stopped and started again, only completed, and he could not do it with hands that were anything other than steady. The strings were cool beneath his fingertips as he touched them.

 

Uncle Toshiro had begun the composition in the years before his birth, when first he was given the knowledge of what must be done to restore the bond between the fractured halves of the Shimada clan. How to continue it once he was gone was one of the first lessons he taught, simple arrangements that grew in complexity and sophistication as his appreciation of both music and mathematics increased, the task handed to him for completion once the arthritis reached a point where even modern medical intervention could no longer restore the cleverness to Toshiro’s hands. Hanzo had done so while sitting vigil at his teacher’s bedside -- had given him something to do besides watch, helpless and useless, as his uncle’s life ebbed away, and it had comforted Toshiro at the last to know that his life’s work was well and safely finished. And it was, even with his additions, a thing of heart aching beauty, at once sweet and sorrowful, mourning for the long years of separation wrapped around a plea for a better future, an apology for past wrongs. It had taken him years of practice not to weep while playing it and he did not do so now, though it was a near thing -- playing it before those for whom it was composed was not the same as any other audience. Particularly when there was only one way for them to respond.

The last of the notes rang off the strings and, as they did, the quality of the air and the light in the inner sanctuary changed. Hanzo took a deep, steadying breath and looked up from the instrument. Before him, the shintai was no longer concealed but a slender spire of stone, sculpted by wind and rain and the passage of millennia in the shape of two sinuous bodies entwined. Beyond it, the mountain rose, impossibly tall, slopes shrouded in primordial forest, pinnacle in racing layers of cloud. A path began at his feet, snaking to either side of the shintai, requiring a choice. He rose and tucked the scroll case into his belt and stepped down. Beneath his feet, the path was soft with moss, at least for now, and he knew that if he looked back now there would be nothing for him to return to once he was done.

 

And, knowing, he took the path to the left, for the living. The forest beyond was dark, only faint shafts of light passing through the canopy hundreds of meters overhead, the trees towering giants larger than any he could recall meeting elsewhere. The path curved off among them, lined in moss of an impossibly vivid shade of green, bordered in stones that seemed, to his eye, too regular in their angles to be anything other than sculpted. He wished, belatedly, that he’d had the sense to take one of the lamps from the shrine before he’d departed as the forest enfolded him: he sensed something, something ancient and not wholly benevolent, within it, below it, something that his presence stirred. 

 

He walked and, as he did, the light faded still further until it was so dark among the trees that the fireflies came out, sparks of faint golden luminescence among the undergrowth. He sensed, rather than saw, something moving among them by the way they blinked out and returned when whatever it was passed, something that did not permit him to catch even a glimpse of it when the trees or undergrowth thinned. The air cooled and thickened, wisps of mist rising from the loam, perfuming it with something sweet and somnolent and vaguely sickening. He felt, if he breathed it long enough, he might desire nothing more than to make a bed for himself in the soft moss beneath those trees and never wake again and knowing this lengthened his stride. His unseen companion kept pace and his stride lengthened again into something closer to a run -- a run that stumbled to a halt at a second branch in the path.

 

Weariness, shockingly sudden and intense, came over him as he considered because, again, the division of the ways offered him nothing with which to make his choice -- neither seemed darker or steeper, more or less perilous or inviting, and as he stood, something cold and damp settled itself into the palm of his open hand. His heart leapt and his breath stuttered to a halt and, against his own better judgment, he held completely and utterly still while whatever it was brushed gently against the skin of his palm, huffing softly, its breath warm against his fingertips. A rough tongue kissed the pad of his thumb and a warm, thick-furred body pressed itself against his hip.

 

Hanzo swallowed, commended his soul to the care of his ancestors, and looked down. A wolf gazed back at him -- an enormous wolf, its fur white as snow in moonlight, its eyes sunlight golden, brilliant and gentle and wise.

 

“Greetings,” Hanzo murmured, his voice sounding thin and strange in his own ears. “Are you my guide, my friend? Have you been sent to lead me to my family?”

 

It made no sound, merely gazed up at him and stepped past him onto the path branching to the right, its pelt gleaming in the dark as though lit from within, eyes brighter than even the brightest fireflies. It submitted, without complaint, to the touch of his hand as he buried his fingers in its ruff and found comfort in its living warmth.

 

“Very well,” He whispered. “Lead on.”

 

And it did, down paths so narrow they were barely wide enough for one let alone two, where the undergrowth reached out to snatch at his hair and garments and, once, at the scroll case, nearly conscious in its malevolence, in the effort to draw him off the path. He saw also that his fears had been correct, for the light cast by the wolf’s pelt fell across the bones of other travelers tumbled among the roots and vines, fireflies lighting the sockets of empty skulls, lichen-frosted ribs playing host to the small creatures of the forest. For its part, the wolf did not seem to mind that he clung to it more tightly as his strength bled away beneath the trees and it led him faithfully through two more changes in track, over three streams of slowly flowing water that he dared not look into too deeply, and to the place where the ancient, hungry forest thinned and the path steepened and air cleared to the scent of pure wind and freshly fallen autumn leaves. 

 

Hanzo breathed deeply of that air and felt it chase the poison from his lungs and from his blood, his mind clearing and his strength returning. The path beneath his feet had changed from moss-coated roots to weathered stone steps, wide and broad and scattered with fallen leaves, golden and scarlet, to the depth of several inches. On one side of the path, the mountain fell away in a steep decline that lay in heavy shadow, the forest there dark and wreathed in heavy mist, on the other it lay covered in birch and maple, oak and elm clad in their autumn glory, towering stands of cedar and spruce scattered among them like quiet secrets. Looking back, he saw at last the gate that stood at the base of the rise, its timbers worn by the passage of many seasons but no weaker for it. 

“Thank you, my friend, I would not have made it through that place without your -- “ He glanced down and found the wolf gone, not even the trace of its tracks left beside his own.

 

This troubled him, though he could not say, even to himself, quite why. More troubling was the thought that he had, somehow, chosen wrongly in his very first choice, for the way he had taken would have devoured his life had help not come to find him. He wondered, and the thought chilled him, how many of those bones lost in the miasm below had been others like him, scions of the Shimada who had come seeking reconciliation with their ancestors only to meet a lonely death, their names unrecorded and unremembered. He wondered why he, of them all, had been spared that fate.

 

Soon, he had no more time to wonder. The path wound around the brow of the mountain and rose steadily, growing narrower and more treacherous as it went. Soon, birch and maple, oak and elm, gave way solely to pine, and then to the low, scrubby plants that thrived on the heights, and then to bare stone and vast fields of snow. The air thinned, so that every breath was a labor, and cold, so that every breath felt like inhaling ice, and the wind carved along the face of the mountain like the blade of a frozen sword. The path narrowed until the steps were barely wide enough to stand upon and Hanzo had to press back against the jagged wall of stone, searching for handholds as he went, lest the wind pluck him off the trail and fling him into the empty air beyond. Between one breath and the next, stormcloud enshrouded the upper reaches of the mountain, riming the path with ice, pelting him with sleet as thunder echoed and sheets of lightning rippled from cloud to cloud. Hanzo knelt and crawled, making himself as inoffensive to the wind as he could, giving himself as many chances to catch himself as possible should he begin to slip and fall. The icy stone sucked the last of the dexterity from his numb hands and the icy wind the last of the warmth from his body as he struggled and, from somewhere quite nearby, he heard a howl: a low, gentle crooning, as a mother to her cubs.

 

He crawled a short way more and found, in the stone face of the mountain, a fissure, a crack just barely large enough to allow him passage, from whence the howl seemed to emerge. Moving with care, he made his way inside as the storm redoubled its fury, rain and hail and snow and winds with the strength of a typhoon, raking the side of them mountain, but inside its skin he was safe. He crawled blindly into the dark until his hands came to rest in warm fur and he found himself regarded steadily by two pairs of gleaming eyes: one the golden eyes he already knew, and the other blue as the cloudless heavens. He collapsed between them, frozen and exhausted, and they gathered close around, warming him with their bodies and their fur and their breath. He wondered, as he lay sheltered in their den, how many others had come this far only to meet their end on the cruel and unforgiving heights of the mountain, their souls lost and their names forgotten. He wondered why he, of them all, had been spared that fate.

 

In time, the storm passed, its violence bleeding away to nothing. Hanzo’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark and, in it, he saw that both the wolves that lay curled around him were white as fresh-fallen snow, white as cloud, and that the crevice where they laired was open at both ends. He rose to his knees and, conscious of their dignity and his own, he gave them his thanks in a grave and solemn scratching of their ears. Both pressed their noses into his hands and kissed his forehead with a kindly lap of their tongues and neither moved to stop him as he crawled toward the far entrance to their cave.

 

On that side of the mountain, the path widened again and while it was still bare, cold stone it was now lined in gates, venerable and proud, and the sky above was clear and bright. Minamikaze’s palace rose against it, shining fiercely in the sunlight, its inner keep five stories tall, its outer towers and walls massive with stone enforcements and heavy wooden gates. As he approached, the first of those gates, carved with the image of the entwined dragons, swung open to allow him entry, each one opening untouched before him as he climbed. At the final gate that pierced the inner wall, he finally met another living being: a retainer, tall and slender, clad in layers of storm blue silk, cloud white hair bound with kanzashi in the form of rabenda in full bloom, with eyes the lightning stroke shade of silver. He bowed deeply and Hanzo returned the gesture.

 

“You have traveled far, Shimada Hanzo.” The retainer said, in a voice far more resonant than his slender frame seemed to allow. “Come. The purpose of your journey awaits.”

 

The final door to the castle opened and the retainer led him inside. At the base of the staircase that would lead them higher, the retainer paused and gestured, and the shoji to either side slid open to reveal the maze of rooms beyond. On one side, the air was thick with the steam of hot, fresh water. On the other, the lamps shone on the most gorgeous clothing he had ever seen, vivid silks covered in embroidery too fine for mortal hands, ornaments of wood and metal, enamel and jewels. “My master offers you the use of the baths and of his wardrobe, should that be your desire.”

 

Hanzo was painfully cognizant that he no doubt looked and smelled like a beggar at that moment, but also that his goal was within his reach. “I offer my most sincere gratitude to your lord, but I would delay no longer the purpose of my journey.”

 

“As you wish.” The retainer turned and set his foot upon the stair and, as they climbed, it seemed to take much longer to reach the second floor of the tower than its size would allow.

 

As they entered the second story of the castle, the retainer gestured again, and the shoji to either side of them slid open, to reveal the maze of rooms and corridors beyond, revealing tables laid for a feast fit to serve hundreds, the air perfumed with the scents of a thousand different delicacies. “My master offers you food and drink, all that you might desire, that you may come into his presence refreshed.”

 

Hanzo was poignantly aware of how long it had been since he had last taken even a small mouthful of food or drink, and he knew also that the provender of the gods was not a gift lightly refused -- knew also that, should he partake of it, no earthly food would ever taste quite so good again. “I offer my most sincere gratitude to your lord, but I would no longer delay the purpose of my journey.”

 

“As you wish.” The retainer turned and set his foot upon the stair and, as they climbed, it seemed to take much longer to reach the third floor of the tower than its size would allow.   

 

As they entered the third story of the castle, the retainer gestured again, and the shoji to either side of them slid open, to reveal the maze of rooms and corridors beyond, darkened by shutters over the outer windows and lit here and there with lamps burning gently perfumed oils, the floors laid with fragrant tatami and cushions and bed silks as far as the eye could see. “My lord offers you the peace of the inner chambers, that you may take your rest and come into his presence restored.”

 

Hanzo’s body ached with exhaustion and his head throbbed with weariness, and he knew that, should he choose to rest, it would be the best and deepest sleep he had ever known, untroubled by dreams of fear or doubt -- and knew also that when he returned, he would never again sleep so well. “I offer my most sincere gratitude to your lord, but I would no longer delay the purpose of my journey.”

 

“As you wish.” The retainer turned and set his foot upon the stair and, as they climbed, it seemed to take much longer to reach the fourth floor of the tower than its size would allow.

 

As they entered the fourth story of the castle, the retainer gestured again, and the shoji to either side of them slid open, to reveal the maze of rooms and corridors beyond. The air was rich with the scent of a hundred delicate perfumes, each one gracing the flesh of a man or woman beautiful beyond compare, each one elegantly dressed or artfully semi-dressed or not particularly dressed at all. Even the retainer looked somewhere between distracted and scandalized. “My lord offers you the companionship of his concubines, whomever you may desire, that you might enter his presence fulfilled.”

 

Hanzo could feel the blood stirring in his veins and the desire quickening in his flesh and he knew, should he choose to yield to the pleasures of the flesh that his hungers would be utterly satisfied and, when he returned, the touch of no mortal lover would ever stir him in the same way. “I offer my most sincere gratitude to your lord, but I would no longer delay the purpose of my journey.”

 

“As you wish.” The retainer turned and set his foot upon the stair and, as they climbed, it seemed to take much longer to reach the fifth floor of the tower than its size would allow.

 

At the pinnacle of the tower, Minamikaze and Kitakaze sat together enthroned. Minamikaze was tall even in his throne, slender as a blade, his beauty as striking as a knife-thrust to the heart, robed in sapphire-and-gold that shimmered like scales in sunlight that fell across the open sides of the upper pavilion. Kitakaze was broad and strong, still bearing the scars of their long-ago quarrel across his face, clad in emerald-and-copper armor that shimmered like scales as he leaned forward in his throne. The expression that crossed his face and which he offered to his lord brother with an impish twinkle in his eyes could only be described as  _ I told you so _ and possibly also  _ you owe me so much money. _ Minamikaze, for his part, rolled his eyes even further heavenward. The only others gathered in the upper chamber were two young men who stood to the side of Minamikaze’s throne, as alike as two blossoms springing from the same bud, likewise robed in shades of blue and gold, their eyes bright silver, and a young woman who stood to the side of Kitakaze’s throne, armored from head to toe in shades of green, armed with swords at her waist and a naginata in one hand, her eyes sunlit golden.

 

The retainer bowed deeply before them both and rose at their acknowledgement. “My Lord Minamikaze, my Lord Kitakaze, I give to you your many-times-great-grandson and many-times-great-nephew Shimada Hanzo, who has come to answer for the conduct of your clan and present proof of the restitution you have demanded.”

 

“Has he?” Minamikaze’s gentle voice held the echoes of a storm still far away, but a storm nonetheless. “Come forward, my many-times-great-grandson, and show us what you have brought.”

 

Hanzo slid the scroll case out of his belt, where it had traveled protected and unharmed, and gave it to the hands of the retainer. With all the grace he had left in his weary body, he sank to his knees before the thrones of his ancestors and bowed his face to the floor, pressing his forehead to the mirror-polished wood. To his weary body, it felt as though they permitted him to hold that position far longer than strict courtesy demanded and when he was released from it, it was Lord Kitakaze who spoke. “Rise, child.”

 

He did so, coming back to his knees, forcing his spine and shoulders straight through sheer force of will and spoke the words Toshiro had engraved on his heart over the years of his tutelage. “I give you greetings and all honor, Lord Minamikaze, Lord Kitakaze. I have come to beg your forgiveness for the wrongs that we, your children, have done to your honored memory and to the purpose that you in your wisdom gave to us. We stand ready to again serve your will in all things.” 

 

Lord Minamikaze held the scroll case in his long-fingered hands, lightning stroke eyes narrowed and his face utterly still. With a tip of one finger he cracked open the seal and withdrew its contents, tightly rolled and yet still inches thick, and began to unwind it that all might see. Lord Kitakaze’s eyes widened and he caught his breath, all three of the younger beings gathered around the thrones gasped aloud. Hanzo breathed peace and held his face impassive thereby, aided by exhaustion, as the work of his life, the painted history of the clan from the hour of its founding to nearly the present unrolled before them, bearing with it the words and deeds of thousands of years in silk and ink, ending the efforts of his grandfather, and his teacher, and his parents to restore the clan to the honor it once abandoned. It had taken years to complete, infused with all of his skill and art, and merely touching it permitted those who had to eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to feel that history come to life beneath their hands, to know its truth.

 

They lingered longest over the end, some form of silent communion passing between the brothers, a communion that filled the air with the stillness before the first breath of a storm. Lord Minamikaze looked away from his brother and gazed not so much  _ at _ him as  _ through _ him, eyes narrowed to gleaming slits. Hanzo met his eyes unflinchingly and refused to look away, for he knew in his soul that his ancestor would take that as a proof of deception. He felt that skyfire brilliance invade him between one breath and the next, pouring through his mind and soul as a cold and scouring wind, touching every thought and memory in a relentless torrent, interrogating the essence of his being. It withdrew as swiftly as it came and Hanzo could not help slumping as it did so, planting his fists on his thighs to hold himself up.

 

“Your proof is accepted.” Lord Minamikaze’s voice was as warm as the wind flowing off a glacier. “The deed we demanded has been done.”

 

“It is so.” Lord Kitakaze echoed, far more warmly. “My daughter.”

 

“Yes, father?” The young woman’s voice was clear and bright.

 

“Long have you desired to walk in the world with your cousins. Is this still your desire?” Lord Kitakaze sounded fondly indulgent, and Hanzo looked up find him smiling at his daughter with a mixture of tenderness and something close to sorrow.

 

“It is.” Kitakaze’s daughter smiled brighter than the sun.

 

“Then go, and find the one who awaits you with your father’s blessing.” And now his smile was most definitely edged in sadness.

 

“Thank you, father.” She caught her father’s hand to her and pressed a kiss to it and fled, laying her hand briefly on his shoulder as she passed him on her way down the stairs.

 

“My sons.” Lord Minamikaze turned to the young men who stood at his side and Hanzo marveled slightly that neither shrank away from the intensity of his glare. “You have also spoken of your desire to walk among your mortal kin. Has nothing I said dissuaded you from this folly?”

 

“Father, with all respect to you and to your wisdom, it has not.” Hanzo decided that only an eldest son would be that bold when speaking to a malcontented dragon-father. “Some things must be learned by experiencing them.”

 

“Go, then.” Lord Minamikaze gestured sharply toward the stairs. “And let us hope you are willing to pay the price for your education.”

 

Lord Minamikaze’s sons both bowed deeply and withdrew, each laying a hand on his shoulder in passing. 

 

And then he was alone with his ancestors and their servant. Lord Minamikaze regarded him coldly, and Lord Kitakaze regarded his brother with something resembling concern. When the elder dragon spoke, his voice was the hiss of silk across the edge of a knife. “You have come far and suffered much for your efforts, son of my sons. Is there some boon you would ask of my brother and I?”

 

“My Lord Minamikaze, my Lord Kitakaze,” Hanzo replied, having given that question much thought, “my teacher passed from the world less than a season ago. His mother, my great-grandmother, is still strong of mind but she is many years older. When she leaves us, I alone will exist to preserve our family’s arts and I am not yet their equal. I may never be.” He swallowed with some difficulty. “I ask the gift of wisdom -- a guide and a companion to aid me in my efforts.”

 

Lord Minamikazi rose slowly from his throne and something in that movement froze the blood in Hanzo’s veins, turned his heart to ice. Lightning flashed, searing his eyes with its brilliance, thunder cracked, deafening, and something long and sharp and cold pierced him to the soul. When he he could see again, all was a tangle of sapphire-scaled coils and icy silver eyes, Lord Minamikaze unveiled in his glory. It took him a moment to realize that the thing that pierced him was a foreclaw black as jet and long as his arm, placed perfectly through the center of his chest.

 

_ You ask of me the gift of wisdom and thus do I grant it to you, son of my sons. _ Lord Minamikazi’s voice curled through his mind, serpentine and venomous with contempt.  _ You are not a dragon and you shall never be one. _

 

He jerked his talon free in a single smooth motion and Hanzo fell, forever.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the expanded tags and mind the trigger warning. This is not a drill.
> 
> ....And now you know why Genji is so wildly overprotective and Hanzo wouldn't do that to him.

“What. An absolute. Dick.” Hana said.

 

“ _ Hana. _ ” Hanzo replied, reprovingly, even as Genji responded with, “ _ I know, right?” _ in a significantly more confirmatory fashion.

 

“ _ Seriously _ . What an  _ utter _ and  _ unregenerate _ asshole.” She came out of her seat limbs akimbo and the gestures she made involved all of her fingers, the LED-powered glow stick she kept clipped to her keychain, and a stray knitting needle snatched from the smoke monster’s project basket and were obscene in at least three languages. “How. How does that even fucking work. How could -- “

 

“Hana, please.” He could hear the strain in his own voice and despised himself for the weakness, but she subsided at the sound, subdued if not actually chastened. He was painfully aware of the ranger’s hand still holding his own and of his brother at his side, bristling with barely contained aggression, and of the weight of so many eyes on him belonging to people he had only just met and whose judgment he dreaded. “I was unconscious for some time -- I’m not entirely sure how long. Miss Hayata told me that I was enclosed inside the inner sanctuary for three days, long enough for Grandmother Sumiko and Genji to grow concerned. On the dawn of the fourth day, the terrible storm rolled in…”

 

*

 

Someone was calling his name. It echoed down to him from some vast distance, as though he were lying, senseless and broken, at the bottom of a dry well, or a mineshaft, or a cavern, somewhere he had fallen and was now, by virtue of someone calling for him, obligated to climb back out. 

 

He found upon asking himself that he did not, in fact,  _ want _ to climb back out. He wanted very much to simply lay there in the cold and the dark until no one remembered his name, until even he no longer knew who or what he had once been. He craved nothingness more than he desired his next breath, to dissolve so completely he left behind not even a ghost. 

 

The voice called again and he was forced, very much against his will, to admire its owner’s persistence. Not enough to  _ reward _ it, but he did find it entirely praiseworthy if aggravating to his attempts at attaining a peaceful disintegration into oblivion. Serenity slipped away and it took all his strength to prevent fear from taking its place.

 

“ _ Master Hanzo, please!” _ The voice called a third time. “ _ Lady Sumiko and Master Genji -- something has happened, I do not know how to help them! Please!” _

 

Fear effortlessly overcame strength, cinched tight around his heart and moved him all in a single moment. He reached out, one hand over the other, clawed his way upward, and as he did so, pain filtered into his awareness. His eyes throbbed and burned and swelled, as though he had wept for his hours but he had no memory of weeping. His throat ached savagely and his mouth tasted of blood, as though he had screamed himself raw but he had no memory of screaming. His muscles moaned in febrile protest as he forced himself to sit up from where he lay on the floor of the inner sanctuary and every joint echoed it as he pushed himself to his feet and took the bare handful of steps to the sanctuary doors. It took him three tries to manage the strength and coordination necessary to undo the inner locks and push the door open.

 

The wind seized it immediately and tore it out of his hands, slamming it against an inner support column hard enough to gouge splinters from both. It was almost pure fortune that Miss Hayata was standing far enough back not to be struck herself and she reached out and caught him as he clung to the doorframe, head swimming in slow, sickening circles.

 

“What has happened?” He rasped, trying to force clarity upon himself, trying to force what he was seeing and hearing to  _ make sense. _ That maniacal howling could not possibly be the  _ wind _ , and that continuous subliminal rumbling could not possibly be  _ thunder. _ He had never heard such savage rain even in the midst of the worst typhoon and, in his life, Hanamura had endured three.

 

“The storm began at daybreak -- it has been doing this for hours now.” Miss Hayata had to shout to make herself heard over the roaring of the wind. “Lady Sumiko and Master Genji fell ill within moments of each other shortly afterwards. They are both unconscious -- I cannot wake them -- all of the connections on our communication devices are down.”

 

Hanzo squeezed his stinging eyes closed and gathered his strength. “I am going to need your help, to guide me back to the house.”

 

“Of course, Master Hanzo.” They laced their arms together and limped out into the storm.

 

The wind blew them both sideways the instant they stepped out of the relative shelter of the shrine and it took them a moment to find their balance again with their awkwardly misaligned center of gravity. Torrents of rain poured off the shrine’s roof and lashed across the open spaces in sheets, soaking him to the skin in a matter of heartbeats -- Miss Hayata was already soaked and shivering. Overhead, lightning danced among roiling clouds, darker than any stormclouds he could recall, and thunder rumbled a low and constant counterpoint to the flashes of its brilliance, vying with the howl of the wind to deafen them as the staggered down the pathway. The water in the garden was knee-deep by the time they reached the house and they raised the storm shutters on the verandah only enough to let themselves in, the force of the wind pressing against them requiring their collective strength to close and lock them down again. Miss Hayata had, sensibly, prepared for the inevitable result of going out into the teeth of that storm: warm, fresh towels and clothing for them both lay just inside the main entrance and by mutual compact they stripped, dumped their wet clothing on the verandah, and made themselves descent with only the bare minimum necessary amount of eye contact.

 

Also sensibly: she had rearranged the interior walls to turn the northern common use room back into a single chamber, the better to attend both her charges. High efficiency ceramic space heaters sat in each corner, close enough to chase the chill away, far enough out of reach that they would not be caught by a flailing limb or in the way of swift action. Most of the electric lights were turned off and those that were not were set on their lowest yield, supplemented by candle lamps bolted high to the walls. They were clearly running entirely battery power and likely had been for some time.

 

Grandmother Sumiko and Genji lay only a few feet apart, both wrapped in several layers of bedclothes and propped on several layers of cushions. Hanzo settled down between them and, before he could object, he found Miss Hayata wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and pressing a cup of tea into his hand. Until she did so, he had not realized how cold he still was, the warmth of the tea wonderfully soothing against his raw throat. “Thank you, Miss Hayata.”

 

She bowed, and settled on the opposite side of his grandmother’s futon. Of the two, he was forced to admit that she looked much better -- her face was frighteningly still and she didn’t even stir when he touched her, but her breathing was steady, her skin warm and dry. Genji, by way of contrast, was not peaceful at all, twisted up in his bedding as though he’d been fighting a mortal struggle against his covers, the color high in his cheeks and both his hair and skin slicked with sweat. When Hanzo laid a hand on his shoulder, his eyes flickered open and darted about blindly, clearly seeing nothing of the world before him, glittering feverishly. His lips moved, but no sound emerged, his face twisted in agony and he subsided back down, restless but insensate.

 

“How long have they been this way?” Hanzo croaked.

 

“Since just after the storm began -- it woke us all, and they fell ill a short time later. A few hours altogether.” Miss Hayata replied.

 

A few hours. Only a few hours. Gently, Hanzo reached down and slid the sleeve of his grandmother’s yukata up her arm. There, beneath the surface of her delicate skin, a dragon tattooed around her wrist and forearm danced, scales rippling gently, silvery-gray and ocean-blue, its eyes the perfect silver-white of a lightning bolt’s heart. Miss Hayata gasped and clutched his grandmother’s unmarked hand. “What is happening to them?”

 

“They have been chosen. They are communing for the first time with their companions, their bondmates.” He could feel something welling up in his chest, something that had the feel of both hysterical laughter and hysterical sobbing, and so he swallowed all of it and held it down until it went away. “Their dragons.”

 

“I...am not certain this was what Lady Sumiko expected.” Miss Hayata ventured, cautiously.

 

“I am certain it was not.” Hanzo replied and closed his eyes.

 

Her hand touched his own. “You should rest, Master Hanzo. You were inside the inner sanctuary for four days.”

 

Four days without food or water or even true sleep would explain why his head kept rotating in slow, nauseating circles. “I must watch over them. I  _ must. _ Genji was not prepared for this -- he did not even believe in it -- if something goes wrong I -- “ He did not, in fact, have any idea what  _ more _ could go wrong but viscerally trusted his brother to find it, if such a thing were possible. “I cannot sleep now.”

 

“Very well. But you should, at least, eat.” A certain steely resolve underlay her gentle tone.

 

“I will eat something if you will rest.” 

 

“Agreed.” He felt, from the muted triumph in her tone, that he somehow managed to lose that negotiation, a presentiment that proved true when she returned a half an hour later with a tray covered in a dozen small plates and bearing a fresh pot of tea. “You do not have to eat it all.”

 

“I apologize for my lack of appetite when we arrived. I meant no insult to your skills.” She accepted his apology with a gracious bow and kept her half of their bargain, by laying out her futon and making it ready for use. 

 

The soup was delicious and as warming as the tea, the hijiki with mushrooms and broth was delightful, and the cold noodles, salt-roasted tuna morsels, and shrimp-and-cucumber salad were kind enough to his stomach that it didn’t immediately attempt to reject them. Miss Hayata took away the remains of the meal but left the tea and, at his request, returned with a pitcher of cool water, a bowl to put it in, and a half-dozen clean cloths. He waited until she was curled up beneath her own blankets and sleeping soundly before he put them to their task, pouring out a measure of water, wetting a cloth, and applying it gently to Genji’s face and neck, sponging away the sweat as he had done when they were younger and his brother’s fevers made him uncomfortable and restless. Genji jerked a bit at the first touch of the cool cloth on his hot skin but did not wake, his eyelids only fluttering slightly without truly opening. Hanzo prepared a second cloth and lay it over his brow and took his brother’s hand into his own, stroking a thumb gently over the remnants of the swordsman’s callus that once striped his palm, trying with all his might not to overanalyze his present silence, his stillness, no matter how unnatural it might be.

 

He refreshed and replaced the cloth twice before Genji stirred again, his face contorting in something like pain, his grip tightening around Hanzo’s fingers, his breath hitching in his chest and emerging from his lips in a sound that was half-moan, half-words. “Genji? Can you hear me?”

 

Genji blindly turned toward the sound of his voice, eyes still closed but moving as though he were dreaming deeply. “I am here, Sparrow. I am here.”

 

He seemed to hear and now it was not  _ almost _ pain twisting his face but the actuality and he curled around himself in the grip of it, jerking Hanzo off his knees with the force of his grip, enough to make the bones in his fingers ache in protest. Hanzo caught himself in the mass of coverlets as Genji burrowed against his chest, tremors strong enough to be nearly convulsions shaking his entire body, and he wrapped his free arm around his brother’s back, gathering him close and rocking him, whispering inanely soothing nonsense around the knot in his throat. “I am sorry, I am  _ so sorry _ , please, please, whoever you are, be gentle with him, it was not supposed to be this way, I -- “

 

“Cousin,” The voice that emerged from Genji’s throat was not entirely his own, nor was it completely different, a mixture of his deep tones and another’s diction. “Could you, perhaps, tell him to  _ stop fighting?” _

 

The eyes that looked up at him from his brother’s face were his own but not, flickering with threads of vivid green and sunlight golden, their combined expression a thing of perfectly balanced agony and exhaustion. He only released his grip on Hanzo’s hand after a moment of desperate struggle, as though he feared losing something precious, a hoarse and furious cry that was entirely Genji making its way past his lips. Hanzo pulled him -- them -- completely into his arms, buried a hand in his brother’s hair, and whispered fiercely, “Sparrow, please. You must stop this. She is here for _you_ , she is Lord Kitakaze’s daughter, she is not your enemy. _Please._ _I don’t know what will happen to you if you refuse to accept the bond!”_

 

“Why,” Genji’s voice and his manner of speaking, alone. “Why -- I’m not -- I never --  _ why? _ ”

 

“Because you are worthy -- because she needs you, and you need her, or you will.” He rubbed soothing circles into the taut muscles of his brother’s back and shoulders. “Please. Please at least  _ listen _ to her.”

 

“Yours. This was supposed to be  _ yours. _ ” He could not imagine why that might matter to his brother but, at the moment, it seemed desperately important. 

 

“I have mine,” Hanzo lied, pitching his voice low and soft and calming, “My bond is made, now it’s time to make yours. Please, Genji.”

 

Genji shuddered, a whole body tremor that tensed and contorted every muscle and joint and, when it passed as abruptly as it came, left him lying bonelessly limp in his arms, head lolling back against his chest. Only the steady rise and fall of his breath gave any evidence that he still lived and Hanzo was forced to accept that as comfort enough as he shifted the blanket off his own shoulders and wrapped it more fully around his still-feverish brother. He counted those breaths as the hours slipped by and the light waned and the storm’s fury slowly abated, the continuous rumble of thunder dying away to a low growl in the distance, the wind fading from a constant roar to an occasional wailing gust, the rain from a battering ram hammering against the roof and storm shutters to a much gentler drumming. It was well after dark before Genji stirred again, his breath hitching and a low sound, not of pain, escaping his lips.

 

“Sparrow?” Hanzo asked, his voice a dusty rasp -- he had drunk the last of the tea some time before and had not wanted to disturb Miss Hayata’s rest or abandon his vigil to find more.

 

Genji’s eyes opened, their color lost in the lambent glow pouring out of them, like sunlight through the first spring leaves. “She says her name is Tombo,” His voice, when he spoke, sounded as though it were coming from inside a dream he still only half believed in. “She is Lord Kitakaze’s youngest daughter and she has been watching over me since I was just a baby.” A little smile curled at the corner of his mouth. “Which is kinda creepy and kinda sweet. My own guardian dragon princess, and I never knew. Did you know? Did you see her before this?”

 

“We met, briefly.” Hanzo admitted, “But, no, I didn’t see her when we were little. I don’t think we were allowed, or that she was allowed to show herself.”

 

“She says that’s true.” Genji’s eyes drifted half-closed again. “Is this...is this how it’s always been for you? Like everything is so much brighter, with its own light inside it, its own  _ voice _ and if you listen hard enough you can hear  _ the whole world? _ ”

 

A cold and pulsing ache shot through the center of his chest and, for a moment, it was all he could do to breathe around it. “I...think it is different for everyone.”

 

Genji freed a hand from the blanket and pressed it against that place where, if Minamikaze’s talon had been a thing of flesh, it would have cleft his breastbone and pierced his heart. “Something -- something isn’t -- Hanzo, are you --”

 

“I am fine, Sparrow.” He pulled his brother’s hand away gently and tried not to breathe as though the pain were setting every inhalation icily alight. “You should rest.”

 

“So should you. You were in there for days. And she says…” Genji’s voice drifted into a silence and, for a moment, he thought his brother had faded into sleep. “...She says you must be exhausted after the trials you endured. Hanzo?  _ What trials? _ ”

 

“I will tell you in the morning.” Moving slowly in deference to his own stiff and tired muscles, he helped Genji back into the futon and tucked him beneath the covers. “Sleep.”

“Okay, okay.” Genji wriggled himself into a more comfortable position beneath the covers. “...Be here when I wake up?”

 

“I will. I promise.” He waited until Genji’s eyes drifted all the way shut and his breathing settled into a sleeping rhythm before gathering up the bowl and cloths and pitcher. 

 

The LED panels mounted to the walls shed just enough light to see by as he made his way to the bath, where he deposited his burden, and from there to the nure-en where it wrapped around the northern end of the house. He unlatched the shutters and raised them by hand on a world where the storm was all-but over, the loudest sound the deep-throated rumble of the rain-swollen waterfall and stream as they poured down the side of the mountain. The breeze that poured down off the ridge was cool for early summer and tasted still of rain, smelled of wet leaves and loam and a thousand other scents of the night forest. Overhead, the clouds hung higher in the sky, shredding slowly apart and allowing glimpses of the stars between them.

 

Hanzo leaned against one of the support posts and  _ listened _ , searching for the wordless music of the world’s song among the sounds of the stream and the forest and found nothing. No light rose from beneath the surface of the trees or the bones of the mountain or the pond or the plants of his grandmother’s garden, no matter how he struggled to focus or unfocus his vision. Fireflies glittered here and there among the undergrowth, and the stars overhead, but the light shed by the spirits of the world, awoken or not, was as gone as if it had never been.

 

Quietly, he lowered the shutters again and went back inside, numb and weary. It took more effort than he thought possible to unbundle his futon and lay it out, to gently shake Miss Hayata awake for her watch, and, even so, it took far too long to fall asleep, his head aching with silence and darkness and unshed tears. He woke, too few hours later, to the rapid-fire  _ pingpingpingpingqweepingsquawk _ of disconnected communications devices becoming reconnected with the predictable results.

 

“I’ll get it!” Genji sang, because of course he was already awake and, if the delectable food smells and feminine voices engaged in quiet conversation emanating from the opposite side of the room were any indication, so was everyone else.

 

Hanzo decided that Genji could, in fact, handle communications with the outside world for at least a few more minutes, and pulled the blankets over his face. Even his body’s frank admission that the food smelled wonderful failed to stir anything like hunger in him and he felt, to the marrow of his bones and the depth of his soul, that he could sleep for a thousand years and still be tired. Part of him, the reasonable part, thought he should be worried about that and a far larger, less reasonable part could not find it in itself to even pretend to care, numb and emptier than he had ever felt before. The reasonable part thought that should be a significant cause for alarm, as well.

 

“Hanzo?” Genji asked, his tone sounding rather strangled around the edges. “Are you awake?”

 

Hanzo made a firmly non-committal noise in the back of his throat and burrowed deeper under the covers.

 

Genji’s light, quick footsteps crossed the tatami and came to a halt at his side. “Seriously,  _ aniki. _ I think you should see this. I think you  _ need _ to see this.  _ Right now. _ ”

 

Hanzo pulled the covers down and rolled onto his side as Genji lithely folded into seiza next to him, eyes still fixed on his phone. “What is it?”

 

“Oh, just -- “ Genji looked up at him and froze, expression rapidly transiting from bewilderment to shock to unadulterated alarm. “Hanzo, what -- what has -- how -- “

 

“Genji, please just let me see.” Hanzo lifted the phone out of his unresisting hands and flipped it around. 

 

The queue contained no fewer than two hundred messages, at least thirty of which were from one or both of their parents, many of which included pictures. Pictures primarily of discrete body parts -- arms and shoulders and legs, more than a few backs, at least one outstandingly impressive set of abs, a handful of thighs, and a highly recognizable full-body shot and two full sleeves, belonging to their parents -- all of which were covered in dragons. Dragons primarily in a vast array of shades between true blue and true green, their manes and tails and assorted furry tufts mostly variances of gold and copper, all glowing from within like stained glass windows with the sun behind them and, just as obviously, even in static pictures, moving beneath the surface of the skin on which they were now etched.

 

Their mother’s were, of course, a regal, royal sapphire, highlighted in true gold, winding up both her arms from the wrist to the upper pectoral, wreathed in cloud and lightning. Their father’s was a single enormous creature coiling from one side of his body to the other amid mountains and mist and trees, its scales a perfect shining emerald. The text that accompanied their pictures was a single word:  _ EXPLAIN. _

Hanzo closed his eyes, took a deep, cleansing breath, and began to dial their mother’s private number.

 

In the end, there was no entirely satisfactory explanation that anyone could offer, not even Grandmother Sumiko. In a thousand years of the clan’s history, at no time had so many been chosen at once, not even near the beginning, after Minamikaze and Kitakaze had returned to the heavens. It argued, loudly, that dragon-bearers were needed, or would be needed, in great numbers, an observation somewhat less than completely mollifying to the egos of at least a few of the participants and deeply perturbing to the peace of others. The Omnic Crisis, its immediate fallout and lingering after-effects, were still fresh in the minds of many, the elders of the clan and the actual board of directors for the  _ zaibatsu _ itself foremost, who reallocated resources and personnel to discover whether another disaster of similar magnitude could be brewing and, if so, where.

 

Hanzo allowed himself to be so allocated because, if nothing else, it gave him something productive to do that consumed the majority of his time and intellectual energy. When he wasn’t tracking global crisis development across multiple axes of potential, he was helping members of the family who hadn’t meditated more than five minutes that one time twenty years ago to find the inner serenity necessary to commune effectively with their bondmates. Between the two extremes there was little time for anything else and what existed he filled with a vigorous exercise regimen in keeping with his previous habits, sleeping no more than he had to in order to not simply collapse from exhaustion, and avoiding his brother at all costs, a task made simpler by Genji’s similarly busy schedule. He was, after all, going to Tokyo Polytechnic in a few months to continue his education and was, between information-gathering tasks assigned by the clan, receiving a succession of fond farewells from his many friends within the family and without. Their paths rarely crossed and when they did it was usually briefly enough that Hanzo could flee without offering offense or risking a confrontation.

 

Genji had, of course, been angry -- understandably so. It was not as though it could be  _ hidden _ , particularly once they got back to Hanamura, where literally everyone in the family not too young to meaningfully consent to the bond now had a glowing dragon tattoo somewhere on their body. The fact that Hanzo’s remained beautifully complex but unexalted ink became apparent within hours of their return and the subsequent explosion from siblingward was spectacular but brief and over once it ended, for which he was enormously grateful. Simmeringly resentful Genji had fangs and poison to fill them that quietly pensive Genji lacked, and his own mind had venomous teeth in plenty to eat away at the equanimity he had scraped together on those nights when he was too tired to work and sleep still mocked him.

 

_ You are not a dragon and you shall never be one. _ He had lost track of the number of nights he had woken with cold agony filling his chest, a pain so terrible it chased away any possibility of further rest and left behind an aching hollow beneath his breastbone when it finally ended. On those nights, he abandoned his bed and sought comfort elsewhere: in quiet meditation on the balcony overlooking the garden, in the pages of a book, binge-watching costume dramas with the volume turned all the way down, because the living quarters in Shimada Castle were built before the advent of effective soundproofing.

 

_ You are not a dragon and you shall never be one. _ It took approximately four and a half months from the hour he entered the inner sanctuary at the family shrine and emerged untransformed before he heard a variation of those words on someone else’s lips. Specifically the lips belonging to their Uncle Goro, their father’s youngest brother, who was a totally insufferable bag of dicks on the best of days and, in the immediate aftermath of being personally gifted with a dragon along with all four of his equally dicktacular offspring, the days were never good. For anyone. “Such a terrible blow, Sojiro -- you have my sympathy,” and the unctuously condescending insincerity of it set Hanzo’s teeth on edge as he passed by in the hall outside his father’s office, “And even though he worked so hard. But, still, having at least one son prove himself worthy must be of some comfort to you…” His father, unfailing diplomat that he was, murmured something politely deflecting to change the subject and Hanzo continued on his way, not wanting to hear any more, unhappily aware that his days of relative peace and comity were coming to an end, whether he wanted them to or not.

 

_ You are not a dragon and you shall never be one. _ The formal request came the week after the start of the new year, once business resumed following the holidays. He received the summons late in the day as the first real snow of the winter began to fall over Hanamura, brought in person by a functionary from his mother’s office, and dismissed his students to have what fun they could before it grew too dark to throw snowballs with a cold knot around his heart. He knew, when he saw the perfectly neutral mask she wore, that she had nothing good to tell him and was therefore not entirely surprised when she presented to him the politely worded demand of the clan elders that he be removed from any position of authority or responsibility. He was not even particularly hurt, at that moment, the part of him that would have been stung by such a betrayal already desolate. He did not, of course,  _ have _ to honor their demand voluntarily; he could, of course, force them to make an actual case proving his unfitness or incapacity. Inasmuch as he already carried all the excuse they needed etched into his skin, he saw no point in dragging the proceedings out, destabilizing the leadership of the clan when it most needed to be cohesive or granting the opportunity to publicly humiliate his particular family, to their ultimate detriment. He sent his formal resignation instrument the next day, along with several finished reports and a number of recommendations as to whom would be most capable at completing the work not yet accomplished.

 

He was, after all, not a dragon and pretending to be one, in even the smallest way, was not a thing that those who now were would tolerate.

 

“I can’t believe they let the elders sandbag you like that,” Genji fumed at him two days later over the phone. “I can’t believe  _ you _ let the elders sandbag you like that. What happened to the brother who could drop a douchebag in his tracks from twenty paces with no more than six words and a bitch-I’ll-cut-you look?”

 

“He went south to Okinawa for the winter.” Genji was traveling, he could see the scenery flashing past the windows he was sitting next to at rate visibly blurred by speed. “It was a tactical decision, little brother. The situation here is...still unsettled and someone is clearly attempting to unsettle it further, I suspect with the intent of invoking old aphorisms about extracting opportunity from chaos. I simply refused to be the means they used to do so.”

 

“Are you throwing Sun Tzu at me? You are. You’re throwing Sun Tzu at me. That’s more like it, and still a little disturbing.” Genji held the phone closer and dropped his voice. “Between you and me, I think whatever  _ situation _ exists could use some hard settling out. How many of the people trying to make something out of you now believed that any of this was  _ real _ even six months ago? And even the ones who  _ did _ believe owe what they’ve got to you, so perhaps a little respect and gratitude might be in order?”

 

“I didn’t do it for their gratitude. I did it because it had to be done and I was chosen to do it.” He smiled tiredly down at the look on his brother’s face. “And now I have completed my task, outlived my own usefulness, and am on the verge of becoming an actual liability to our parents.”

 

“You’re worth more than the sum of your duties, Hanzo.” Genji stared earnestly up at him from the surface of his phone. “You need to get out of there for a while. It’s not healthy for you. How long has it been since you’ve eaten a whole meal, or slept a whole night through?”

 

“Is that your subtle way of telling me I look like crap?” Hanzo replied, as lightly as he could.

 

“No, I wasn’t being subtle  _ at all _ .” Genji’s eyeroll had grown a couple layers of expressiveness in their few months apart. “You’re  _ going gray _ , Hanzo. You’re not even twenty-two yet. Get  _ out _ of there, ask Mom to release some of your trust early, come to Tokyo. Apply to my school. Apply to the University of the Arts! I know you want to. You can become the nation’s best and most highly lauded fantasy author-artist combo -- I mean, you’ve already got up close and personal experience dealing with asshole great-dragonparents! And when some shit somewhere inevitably hits the fan and the family needs somebody who knows everything about everything to tell them what to do, they can come crawling to our palatial bohemian arts arcology and  _ beg _ you to save their asses! It’ll be fun, come on  _ aniki _ , you know you want to.”

 

“Tempting. I will consider it.” His preparations for departure were already made but the small voice of reason in the back of his mind was whispering frantic counsel to reassess them. “Where are you, anyway?”

 

“On the hypertrain back from Hokkaido. Lake Toya is beautiful this time of year. Snowbunnies and dudes in tight spandex as far as the eye can see, debauchery in the hot springs, and we are totally getting you laid the first weekend we’re living together. I cannot even begin to estimate the number of people just in the game development department alone that would go for your combination of hot and brooding. They’ll be designing characters after you for a decade.” Genji grinned an evil grin and he couldn’t help the smile it pulled out of his own mouth. “Don’t just  _ say _ you’ll think about it, okay?”

 

“Okay. You should get back to your friends -- I can hear them doing something inadvisable in the background.” It fell off his tongue before he could stop it. “I love you, Sparrow.”

 

He ended the call, and turned off his phone. Outside, a light snow was falling over the gardens, delicate flakes mixing with the pale pink of the never-ending genetically engineered sakura blossoms, the last of the light draining from the sky in the west. In another hour it would be fully dark, the last of the castle’s day staff would be leaving for home, and the gates would be closed against all but scheduled visitors, of which there were none tonight. Neither of his parents were, in fact, at the castle or even in Hanamura -- his mother was in Los Angeles attending a conference and his father was New York meeting with a scholar of esoterica whose writings had attracted the clan’s attention. The week before, they had been joking about splitting the difference and meeting in Chicago for a dinner date before flying home together. With the exception of the security team, he was entirely alone.

 

He had come to his decision in the small hours of the morning and made his preparations throughout the day. He selected clothing with loose sleeves and in dark colors. He bathed early enough in the day that the ridiculous mass of his hair had a chance to dry completely. He made certain the edge on his knife was properly sharp. He refreshed the offerings before the kamidana and meditated there for an hour. He wrote three letters, one for each of his parents and for his brother. And then he waited for the last of the light to die.

 

The snow was falling more heavily by the time he stepped outside into the garden, the paths already covered and the patches of grass beneath the sakuras becoming so. The soft golden glow of the lamps was muted as were all the sounds that made it past the barrier of the walls, a gentle hush in which the loudest thing was his own quiet footfalls as he walked to the place he selected, a cluster of three trees and artfully arranged boulders, their branches frosted and the ground beneath shadowed and scattered with fallen petals. He knelt and rested his back against the bole of the tree, breathed deeply of the still air, allowed the chill to sink past the barrier of his skin and flesh to join with the far greater cold and dark and nothing within him. 

 

It was far easier than he thought it would be to set the edge of a knife to his own flesh and draw it the length of his forearm. Blood welled at once as it bit into the radial artery at the base of his wrist and poured across his skin in a warm crimson waterfall as he cradled his arm and his blade in his lap. Dizziness settled in swiftly and he was grateful for the tree at his back, holding him more or less upright where he sat, for without it he was fairly certain he would have fallen. Weariness followed close on its heels, and he let it pull his chin towards his chest and his eyes closed, let it loosen his grip on the haft of his knife.

 

“Hanzo?” 

 

His head snapped up and his eyes open at the sound of that voice echoing off the interior garden walls: Genji. Confusion and disorientation welled up behind his eyes and swirled about inside his skull, because that was impossible. Genji could not possibly be in Hanamura. Genji was on a hypertrain on the way to Tokyo, returning to school from a winter holiday. Genji was walking down the snow-covered stairs that led to the inner garden, muffled to the neck in an obnoxiously green ski jacket, quartering and scanning the space the way they’d been taught years before.

 

“ _ Hanzo? _ I  _ know _ you’re in here somewhere -- security saw you coming down the walkway. You -- “ He felt his brother’s eyes find and settle on him. “ _ There _ you are. What are you doing, you must be  _ freezing _ .”

 

The knife had already fallen out of his hand and slid down his thigh, lying somewhere beneath the snow among the smaller stones at his side. He turned his arm face-down and tucked it defensively against his stomach, the warmth of his own blood soaking through the layers of cloth. It took several moments and his brother picking his way carefully down the icy stairs, making his way in his direction, to gather the words he wanted to say. “Genji -- I thought you were going back to the city.”

 

“So did I. And, here’s the thing -- I  _ was. _ ” Genji stopped at the edge of the path, haloed in the light of the lamp at the base of the stairs, his head tilted in the curious-bird fashion he had in common with his nickname. “We stopped in Takasaki to take on passengers and while I was outside stretching my legs I  _ saw _ her and she was all upset and I couldn’t refuse to come back? I mean, I’ve never seen her that far away from the castle before.”

 

“Her?” Hanzo asked, he he could hear the strain and the half-slur in his own voice as his concentration tried to slide away.

 

“Lady Hanamura.” Genji advanced another view steps, his eyes narrowing. “The spirit of this place.” Then, more softly, “You can’t see her, can you?”

 

He could think of no way to respond to that that wouldn’t bring his brother closer, and that was the last thing he wished to do. Genji came closer, anyway, and knelt in the snow an arm’s-length away; when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “You  _ can’t _ see her. How long -- no, you don’t even have to tell me  _ that. _ Since the summer.”

 

Hanzo nodded, silently, because he could still at least manage that, with his head lightening and his vision slowly tunneling at the edges.

 

“Why didn’t you  _ tell _ me?” And now there was real anguish in his brother’s voice. “You let me go on and on about how  _ beautiful _ it all was and you -- you -- “ He heard the breath catch in Genji’s chest. “ _ You’re bleeding. _ ”

 

He tried, without success, to pull back -- there was nowhere to pull  _ to _ and coordination was fleeing him as quickly as consciousness. Genji’s hand closed around his wrist and even the pain was a cold and distant thing as he tried to apply pressure over a wound longer than two hands alone could cover. 

 

“ _ Security!” _ Genji’s voice broke in mid-word and he hated himself for that more than anything else as cold and shock and blood-loss pulled him down. “I need an emergency medical team at my ping in the gardens, my brother is severely injured.  _ Now!” _

 

*

 

The room was silent after the stopped speaking and his free hand was absolutely not steady as it brought his now-cold tea to his lips.

 

“I spent some time in the hospital, recovering, after that.” He finally said, if only to break that terrible, nerve-clawing silence. “Our mother agreed, after a great deal of negotiation, that it was probably best that I not stay in Hanamura.  _ I _ decided not to stay in Japan.” An involuntary smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Seattle was lovely, but it reminded me too much of home. San Francisco even moreso. I  _ really did _ choose to come here because UNM was offering ridiculous incentives for traditional media art students. And there are no deserts -- “

 

Hana’s arms closing around his neck choked off what he’d been about to say and Lucio’s joined her a moment later. He was fairly sure the third layer of weight was his brother, and that golden glow filtering down over all of them was probably one of Zenyatta’s spheres.

 

The ranger did not relinquish his grip on his hand through it all and, when he spoke, it was with a certain cool serenity edged in an absolute promise. “I’m beginnin’ to think once we’re done with the Serpent-Wolf, I’m goin’ to have to have a frank and meaningful conversation with a dragon.”  


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two new pieces of fanart!
> 
> From Chapter One: http://gnomeicecream.tumblr.com/post/161349079672/ghost-stories-on-route-66-by-nagaina-or-solivar
> 
> From Chapter Nine: http://hellomynameisandiam.tumblr.com/post/161564615150/hanzo-more-from-ghost-stories-on-route-66
> 
> Advance warning: there's probably going to be about a two week gap in updates to Ghost Stories while I write a short piece for the Blackwatch Classified 'zine. Once that is complete, updates will resume as normal.

A plot was being hatched. Hanzo watched it unfold out of the corner of his eyes as he helped fetch Tupperware containers to box up the uneaten food and shuttled armloads of dishes and silverware back to the kitchen to be washed. Hana was, perhaps predictably, in the center of it as she buzzed around the room helping to fold up chairs and rearrange furniture. Zenyatta, he realized, appeared to be deeply involved as well, as they helped maneuver the dining table back into place and, to his surprise, Hot Vampire Dad/Jack, who spent an intense three minutes discussing something in an inaudible undertone with her while they pretended to be having a hard time unlatching the legs of a folding table.

 

“Hana is  _ definitely _ up to something,” He muttered,  _ sotto voce _ , as he passed the ranger on his way to the refrigerator with an armful of freshly loaded storage containers.

 

“Dare I ask?” The ranger, up to his elbows in soapy dishwater, asked as he returned for another armload.

 

“I’m not sure but, well, I’ve known her long enough to recognize all her tells.” Hanzo replied, peeking around the edge of the archway. 

 

Zenyatta and Hana and, to his surprise, Reinhardt had Genji more or less pinned against the window seat overlooking the porch, chattering happily away. Hot Vampire Dad/Jack and Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad/Gabe were having what looked to be a quiet but animated conversation next to the fireplace and TSMD, frankly, had at least two too many pairs of eyes narrowed to gleaming crimson slits for anyone’s peace of mind. Lucio and Ana were building a pair of geometrically perfect pyramids out of the leftover fruit and pastries on the two platters they’d claimed and were at least close enough that he could hear them talking quietly but seriously about neuroacoustics and the role of sound in general and music in particular in the healing arts.

 

He ducked back around before anyone could notice him spying and found the ranger leaning back against the counter with the dishwater circling the drain and a grin curling both sides of his mouth that would not have looked completely out of place on at least one of his parents. Hanzo opened his mouth to ask the provenance of that expression only to be stopped by a gentle if slightly damp and detergent-scented finger pressed against his lips as the ranger came to the archway, fishing a keyring out of his pants pocket as he did so.

 

“Reinhardt, could you and the gang here take all this extra stuff back to the storage lockers?” He tossed the keys underhand and Hanzo heard them make contact with someone’s palm.

 

“Sure, we’ll be glad to help!” Hana perked perkily. “C’mon, Genji, you’ve got to see the inside of the park office, there’s a little museum and everything, we’ll pick out shirts, it’ll be fun.”

 

“Wait, what -- “ 

 

“Come, my young friend!” Hanzo was fairly certain that was the sound of three folding chairs and his brother being tossed lightly over someone’s mountainous shoulder and hauled outside. “I seem to recall that you also offered to show us your mighty companion. I, for one, have  _ always _ wanted to meet a dragon.”

 

“ _ Hey. _ ”

 

“Give it up, G, you’re totally outnumbered on this one.” Lucio that time, sounding amused. “And once we’re done at the park office, we’re talking a nice, slow walk up to the hippy garden center and a nice, slow walk back.”

 

“ _ REALLY?!” _

 

“Yep.” That was Hot Vampire Dad. “Behave, you two. Don’t do anything that would traumatize your other father too much.”

 

“ _ Jack. _ ”

 

The front door closed, firmly, and Jesse stepped out of the kitchen just long enough to lock it. Hanzo, astonished at the speed with which the entire maneuver had been executed, stayed where he was, pinned to the kitchen wall.

 

“For the record? You’re right, she  _ was _ up to something.” Jesse leaned up against the arch at his shoulder and peered around it. “We worked it out while you were rousting your brother. Are you okay, darlin’?”

 

Hanzo gave that question the consideration it deserved. “I’ve had better days.”

 

“No doubt. I kinda get the feelin’ you aren’t the sort to bare your soul all that often.” Gently. “Didn’t mean to make you do it now, either. I’m sorry for that.”

 

“Don’t be -- it’s not your fault.” Hanzo wished, desperately, that the kitchen had some sort of decorative wall hangings or visually arresting tchotchkes to fixate on but, no, only windows and herb planters and basically utilitarian dish towels. “Genji and I had already decided we were going to tell the others because it was going to come out eventually anyway and then --”

 

“Everything happened all at once and suddenly you weren’t just telling your closest friends, it was your closest friends and a bunch of people you’d never met before, and that  _ is _ my fault. I shouldn’t have asked just then. And I’m sorry, because that hurt a lot more than it had to.” A warm hand came to rest on his. “If there’s anything I didn’t want, it was to cause you more pain.”

 

There was something in the ranger’s voice that sounded dreadfully familiar, though it took him a moment to place it. “If I accepted your apology, would that make you feel better?” Hanzo asked, feeling a helpless giggle trying to make its way up his throat and crushing it without mercy.

 

“Yes. Yes, it would.” The ranger sounded bemused, not offended, and at that Hanzo  _ did _ let the giggle out, not exactly the sanest sound he’d ever made, but significantly less maniacal than some. “Hanzo, are you -- “

 

“You may consider yourself forgiven.” He half-turned to face the ranger, his ranger, and found him staring down with eyes darkened almost to true black, a worry-mark engraved between his brows. “This is going to sound terrible, but I really feel I should say it. There are maybe a handful of people in the world who actually care if I’m in pain. Approximately all of them are in this town right now. It continuously astonishes me that you’re one of them. I’ve been  _ nothing _ but trouble to you.”

 

And now his eyes did darken that last shade and Hanzo found himself being pulled into an embrace he was not at all inclined to resist, resting his face against the curve of the ranger’s shoulder, and could not help but notice how rapidly his heart was beating. “Yeah.” It came out on the breath of a low chuckle. “Trouble followed you to my door -- but  _ you _ aren’t the trouble and, even if you were, that’s not all you are.”

 

“For now I think I’ll choose to believe that.” The embrace tightened a fraction and Hanzo nestled himself more closely into it, listened to the ranger’s breathing as it evened, as his heartbeat slowed back to normal, and couldn’t repress the shiver that travelled down his spine as warm fingers came to rest on the back of his neck.

 

A thought crawled through his mind -- a wild and dangerous thought that immediately caused that little voice he associated with reason to begin screeching in painfully high-pitched distress which proved to be startlingly easy to ignore. His hands found their way, slowly and gently, to the ranger’s hips and it felt almost as if they were made to lie there, curves perfectly aligned. He turned his face slightly, so he could nearly feel it beneath is lips when when the ranger’s pulse jumped in his throat and he most definitely felt the breath catch. His own mouth and throat went painfully, impossibly dry as he looked up. “Jesse?”

 

“Darlin’?” He moved back, just enough to look down, as Hanzo leaned up to meet the motion.

 

The brush of their lips was delicate, gentle, entirely chaste. It set Hanzo’s blood on fire as though he had naphtha running in his veins and someone had just dropped a match. It took all his strength not to demand more than that and he pulled back as far as he could against the grip on his shoulders. “Thank you -- for coming for me, for saving my brother and my friends.”

 

The ranger --  _ Jesse, his name is Jesse, you just kissed him, you fool, I think you can call him by his name now _ \-- made a tiny, pained noise in the back of his throat and the grip on his shoulders tightened nearly to the point of discomfort. His eyes flickered, something bright dancing in their depths, and he squeezed them closed, a tremor running the length of his body, and Hanzo reached up to cradle his face in his hands. “Jesse -- Ranger McCree -- are you --” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Did I  _ hurt _ you? Are you hurt, have you been injured this entire time, should I --”

 

“ _ No _ .” It came out ragged, more a gasp than a proper word. He reached up and took Hanzo’s hands in his own and squeezed them gently, and when he opened his eyes they were gentle, dark and tired and  _ sad. _ “It’s -- it isn’t like that. I wanted to talk to you -- about this, about the possibility of this, I shoulda done it this morning before everything else happened but I --” He stopped, breathed deep, and looked away. “We need to put fresh bandages on you. And we need to talk. But for right now, why don’t you go grab yourself a shower and I’ll find you some clean clothes. Okay?”

 

Hanzo nodded and, for a moment, neither of them moved. Then, with a whole-body sigh, the ranger let go of his shoulders and he all-but fled to the bathroom.

_ Why did you do that why did you do that why in the name of all the gods ever did you do that?! _ The voice of reason was wailing in the back of his mind and, once again, it was fairly easy to ignore because his heart was singing, no his heart was more than singing, his heart was Julie Andrews twirling through a field of wildflowers on the top of a mountain singing a Tony Award winning song from the world’s most famous musical and he. Could. Not. Stop. Grinning. They were going to  _ talk. _ About  _ this. _ And, frankly,  _ talking about this _ was more than he ever expected, more than he ever thought to expect, more than he ever thought to think he might deserve, not after that morning, after hearing from his own lips how weak and selfish and  _ useless _ he was, and he ruthlessly cut that train of thought off before it could reach its inevitable conclusion. 

 

_ He wants to talk! _ He mouthed at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror as he pulled the tee-shirt over his head. The bandaging gave him a moment of pause, wrapped as it was all the way up his arm from fingertips to shoulder, the only uncovered element being the swirls of ink across his left pectoral plane. The strips overlapped almost like braidwork, letting his elbow and wrist flex almost normally even though his fingers felt stiff, and were secured in such a way that he absolutely could not find an end to begin unwinding them despite a diligent search. It was with some trepidation that he opened the door and called down the hall, “Ranger McCree?”

 

“It’s still Jesse, darlin’.” His voice echoed back from the kitchen.

 

Hanzo’s heart tumbled off into distinctly floral-scented squeeing rhapsodies again and for a moment he actually forgot what he wanted to ask. “The bandages -- is it okay to get them wet, or…?”

 

“Oh! Yes -- leave ‘em on for right now, they’ll handle gettin’ soaked and then we can just cut ‘em off.” He poked his head around the edge of the archway. “You got everything you need?”

 

“Yes, thank you!” There were, in fact, fresh towels just inside the linen closet and the shampoo and scrub that formed the basis of so much of the ranger’s own scent and Hanzo found himself turning the water far, far colder than he usually preferred just to make it through the bathing process without mortally embarrassing himself. 

 

Jesse left a gift of fresh clothing hanging on the back of the bathroom door, a pair of sweatpants more his own size and a long-sleeved shirt that he elected to leave off for the time being. He found the ranger in the freshly reconfigured living room, with what was likely the strange and numinous equivalent of basic first aid supplies laid out on the coffee table, sitting with his elbows braced on his thighs and his head resting in his hands. His hair looked as though he’d spent the last several minutes alternately tugging at it and smoothing it down and he was absorbed enough in what he was thinking about that he missed Hanzo’s soft-footed entrance entirely. “Jesse?”

 

The ranger, he couldn’t help but notice, had that special level of personal deportment that made it seem as though he  _ completely meant _ to leap to his feet with a sound somewhere between shriek and a squawk while not quite falling over a stationary piece of furniture when startled. Hanzo drew upon hundreds of years of iron self-control producing cradle training and managed to keep a completely straight face as he settled on the world’s most comfortable couch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

 

“Oh, my heart.” Jesse settled back into his chair. “I’m going to put a cat bell on you.”

 

“Would that help?” Hanzo asked, and absolutely could not restrain the foolish smile that crawled across his face as he said it.

 

“...It might.” Jessed grinned that bone-melting grin of his and Hanzo heroically resisted the urge to dissolve into a puddle as his spine crumbled under the influence. “Ready?” He moved over to the couch and held up a set of what Hanzo knew to be trauma shears.

 

“Do I have a choice?” He held out his arm and Jesse slipped the blunt tip of the shears under the edge of the bandages and began snipping carefully.

 

“Point. Still, there’s ready and there’s  _ ready. _ ” Jesse’s smile was both warm and wry, in a way that made his stomach and his heart reconsider their earlier joint acrobatic endeavors as inadequate. “I gotta warn you, this isn’t going to be pretty to look at for a while, but we’ll do what we can to speed the healing.”

 

“I sort of guessed about the not-pretty part.” He watched as the bandages parted. The distortion began roughly at mid-bicep along a ragged line -- part of the tattoo remained untouched. The rest looked like a child’s chalk drawing that had been left out in the rain, streaks of color stretched through striations that looked half like horribly distorted scales, half like unhealthily thin and mangy fur. The socket where the eye had lain in the middle of his forearm was an empty pit ringed in reddened, raised flesh that was genuinely tender to the touch. Five tiny puncture marks lay just below it, on the inside of his wrist, scabbed over. The skin was stretched thin over his fingers, the knuckles swollen and sore, the nails lengthened and thickened. Emotional preparation allowed him to look steadily at it without feeling too much urge to screech and claw it all off with his free hand and teeth. “Was it...trying to give me  _ claws? _ ”

 

“We think, yes.” Jesse slipped on a pair of nitrile gloves and opened a jar of cobalt blue glass; the scent that wafted out from it was rich and bittersweet, almost like incense, and the touch of it on his skin was sleek and soothing. “I...kinda have a confession I need to make and I’m not sure how to start.”

 

“At the beginning?” Hanzo suggested, casually, oh so casually, hoping that excruciatingly complex gymnastics routine taking place inside his ribcage was not clearly audible in his tone.

 

Jesse applied the first layer of replacement bandaging to his fingers. “I suppose you’re right about that.” A second layer went on, and the careful weave between them and over the knuckles and across the palm to give it a bit more flexibility. “I...kinda didn’t tell you the whole truth about what happened, after you were hurt and I had to reel you back into your body.”

 

The acrobatics in his chest abruptly ceased in mid-routine as the uneven parallel bars collapsed under a sudden, crushing increase in local gravity. “... _ Oh? _ ”

 

It must have shown in his voice because Jesse looked up from his hand, an expression of intense distress on his face. “Nothing I told you was a lie, I promise. Not a word. But I didn’t tell you everything I should have because, honestly, I thought you’d take the medicine and things would sort themselves forthwith and everything in your life would go back to normal and I’d never see you again. I really, truly never thought for one moment that I would see you again, that the thing that attacked you was one of the elder  _ naayéé _ , that any of this would happen. I never would have sent you back with nothing but a box of tea and my business card to protect you otherwise.”

 

“I never thought that of you.” Hanzo replied, his ribs decompressing a bit. “You really don’t seem to be the sort to let others die of their own stupidity.” 

 

“Yeah -- that’s kinda part of the job. Literally, it’s in all the Federal service employee handbooks.” A little grin came and went on his face and he bent again to his task, making sure the bandages allowed him a reasonable amount of motion in his wrist. “When I caught up with you, you were badly hurt. In retrospect, I realize that the Serpent-Wolf probably tore you open tryin’ to get at something it wanted inside you but, at the time, you just seemed...mauled. And I saw that you’d already been hurt, sometime in the past -- Minamikaze left a mark on you that’s impossible to miss. And all of it was makin’ it hard to hold you together, to get you back into your body where you would be reasonably safe, and unless stuff like this is involved --” He gestured at the supplies laid out on the table, “I ain’t much of a healer. It’s not my gift. I needed help.” He finished the last bits of the wrapping, and sat back a little. “Let me see how it flexes.”

 

Hanzo put his arm through its paces and Jesse made a few adjustments. “Who did you ask?”

 

Jesse finished the last of the securements and rose to add a bit more fuel to the fireplace. “Someone who could help bind you back into your body, and help hold the pieces of your soul together until you could heal on your own. Which was the purpose of the medicine Ana made, actually, to help the healing process along and --”

 

“Jesse.” Hanzo said quietly. “Would it help to know that I I had a vivid dream,  _ an extremely vivid dream _ , that I was here and so were you and your parents and you were talking about --” He took a deep breath, swallowed that lie before it could go any further, and changed course. “I’m sorry. That was unworthy of both of us. I walked out of my body again that first night, after you brought me home. Not at first -- I slept very deeply at first. But toward morning I came back, and I heard you speaking to your parents about this -- about a tie, between us, and how you couldn’t sleep because if you did it would draw me back here. Have you been awake this  _ whole time? _ ”

 

He rubbed the back of his head, everything about his body language the precise junction between  _ sheepish _ and  _ ready to jump out of his skin _ , a little huff of laughter making it past his lips. “Yeah, I’ve been. Not that it appears to have helped any. So you...heard that whole thing.”

 

It was not a question but Hanzo chose to treat it as one. “I did.”

 

“Believe me when I say I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had any other choice.” He addressed that to the fire and the tension in his shoulders and spine ratcheted another degree. “The...person I asked for help  _ did _ help. Stitched your soul back together and tied you back to your body, but the...threads, for want of a better term, that she used to do it came from me, so I could lend you strength and protection until you were fully healed.”

 

_ For the sake of the one who lent you this, I think you should, perhaps, not meet him just now. _ The words echoed through him and he knew, knew to the depths of his being, that he hadn’t been dreaming when he heard them. “You gave me a part of your  _ soul. _ ”

 

“I didn’t mean -- I didn’t  _ want _ \-- to force a bond like that on you, but if I hadn’t you would have  _ died. _ ” He hunched his shoulders as though he were expecting a blow, or a verbal excoriation, or some other, equally improbable thing that Hanzo could not imagine doing, his voice soft and edged in anguish. “The good thing is, now that you’re here, we can undo it -- take the time to heal you properly, all of it, and make you whole again.”

 

“All of it?” Hanzo rose and joined him by the fire, rested a hand on his arm. “ _ Whole? _ ”

 

He shivered, a whole-body thing despite the warmth of the fire, and half-turned, the firelight catching his eyes. “When we brought you in last night, I called Ana right away -- your friend was hurt, and you were hurt, and your brother was losin’ his mind from worry. She saw in you what I saw -- the scar in your soul -- and she thought it might be more than that, a wound that had closed up on the surface but was still raw underneath, not really healed at all. Ana, she knows how to fix that sort of thing, how to make things that didn’t come together right at first heal true. If anyone could do it, it’s her.”

 

“Jesse,” Hanzo asked, the words barely making it past the knot in his throat, “are you -- you can’t be --”

 

“I’m sayin’ we might not be able to give you a dragon, but maybe we  _ can _ give you back the whole rest of the world -- and who knows what you could find, or what you could become, once you have the eyes to see and the voice to speak and the hands to touch again?” He rested a hand over Hanzo’s own, and squeezed gently. “You don’t  _ have _ to be a dragon to be more than nothin’, Hanzo Shimada. You’re more than that already. You just need to find your way and we can help you with that.” 

 

_ You do  _ **_not_ ** _ know who you are, cousin. But you have chosen the path that will lead you to the where and the when that you will. You need only the courage to walk it. _ He heard it again, soft and husky, affectionate and faintly mocking, as though the speaker were standing at his back, whispering in his ear. He felt the truth of it resonating inside him as completely as he had ever known anything in the years he had spent studying at his uncle’s side, or the years he had spent since, broken and incomplete and disjointed from all he had once been and thought he would never be again. Something stirred in his heart, something he hadn’t dared to entertain for so long he had almost forgotten what it felt like, something bright and fierce even weakened with disuse, and he found it curling his lips into a smile, filling his eyes with tears.

 

“Yes,” It took him a moment to force his voice steady. “Yes, I would like that. When can we start?”

 

*

 

“Yes,” Ana Amari informed him, an hour and a half later, as they sat together in the pleasantly shady courtyard portico of Jack and Gabe’s  _ hacienda _ , drinking deliciously minty tea from antique Moroccan glasses. “He  _ has _ been awake this entire time, mostly by virtue of abusing his access to my pharmacopeia and his own gifts and, yes, it is enormously dangerous for him to continue doing so. Such energetic overdraws cannot be held at abeyance forever and when they come due it can cause lasting harm.” She fixed Jesse with a baleful hawk-eyed glare. “Fortunately,  _ one _ of you has turned out to be  _ sensible. _ ”

 

“Ana, you wound me.” Jesse clutched his heart, his expression one of cruelly abused innocence. “And, for the record, I’ve also been drinkin’ a lot of coffee.”

 

“Whatever Jamie brews in that machine shop, it is  _ not _ coffee. I seriously doubt it’s even of plant-based extraction.” Ana set her glass down with a decisive click. “I wish to examine you both, separately and together, to determine where the junctures between your souls lie and how the exchange of life and strength is passing between you.”

 

“Of course.” Hanzo agreed, echoed a moment later by Jesse’s serenely even, “Yes, ma’am.”

 

“Ideally, we should begin as soon as possible -- Cerrillos is as well-defended against intrusions from Beyond as anywhere, but no defense is unbreakable and the thing that pursues you is particularly aggressive.” She paused. “I would like Dr. Tekhartha to consult on this matter, as well. His insight may be invaluable.”

 

Zenyatta was, at that moment, in the largest of the compound’s four greenhouses, the one that contained a profusion of medicinal plants so vast that even Hanzo’s own comprehensive education on the topic failed completely before they reached the third row of hydroponic tables, though he was fairly certain at least a few of the species on display were highly toxic, deeply hallucinogenic, or some combination of the two. He caught a glimpse of Zenyatta’s smoothly hairless head bowed next to Genji’s offensive-to-nature green one, their attention apparently entirely engaged by something relatively close to the ground, and, as they rounded the table, he could see why. Gamboling playfully around their feet was a creature that looked like the inevitable outcome of a torrid threeway between a corgi, a pangolin, and a jar of vantablack. The only actual suggestion of its friendliness was a smoke-white tongue lolling out of a winsome doggy smile, because the hellfire crimson eyes, inch long fangs, and spiky, eye-disturbingly lanky body suggested an ankle-savaging would probably be the least of anyone’s concerns if you happened to step on it in the dark.

 

“Jesse,” Hanzo asked in an undertone, “what the actual and entire fuck is  _ that? _ ”

 

“Oh, that’s Chad. One of Jack’s seeing-eye hellhounds. Well, okay, technically he’s not really a hellhound in the traditional sense of the term -- he’s a barghest, actually, Jack tripped over him in a Snickelway awhile back and they took a shine to each other, he was just a pup at the time.” Jesse grinned. “Wait ‘til you meet Binky.”

 

“Chad.” Hanzo repeated.

 

“Yep.” Jesse agreed.

 

“Your  _ father _ named a  _ hellhound _ \-- “

 

“Barghest.”

 

“-- _ Chad.” _

 

“Yeah, Gabe pretty much suspended his naming things privileges after that.”

 

Chad-the-barghest-not-hellhound, as though he instinctively knew he was being discussed, looked in their direction, uttered a bone chilling ululation that would no doubt have driven a high-strung British nobleman to his death on the moors, and galloped at them, tongue and tail both wagging in delight. Jesse crouched down to meet him and presently had both hands engaged in the process of providing a tummy-rub that, given the angles of the creature’s fur and the fact that light seemed incapable of escaping its surface, might have violated at least a few laws of physics. “Who’s a good l’il hellpuppy? Yes,  _ you _ are!”

 

“Hellpuppy?” Genji asked as he and Zenyatta joined them, and Zen knelt to join the physically impossible tum-rubbing action.

 

“I understand that the technical term is ‘barghest.’” Hanzo replied, dryly.

 

“How’s the arm?” Oh so casually and with a distinct undertone of  _ has your virtue been compromised in a way that will require violence? Because I can do violence. Right now if necessary. _

 

“Hideous.” Hanzo assured him, with a gentle suggestion of  _ no, absolutely not, for the love of all the gods please stop. _

 

“Damn. Well, we’ll just have to go home and get it fixed properly at some point. I know a place in Koenji.” Airily and with a clearly audible subtext of  _ can we leave now? Can we can we please please please? _

 

“I’ll think about it.” Hanzo flicked him a look that said  _ no, not yet _ more clearly than mere words.

 

“Doc, Missus Amari would like to have a professional word with you, if you wouldn’t mind?” Jesse’s voice had no meaningful implications to it but the content alone was sufficient to snap Genji’s attention to him at once.

 

“Why?” Genji demanded even as Zenyatta said, “Yes, of course.”

 

The resulting silence was, for an instant, intensely awkward.

 

“Mrs. Amari wishes to accelerate the process of solidly anchoring my soul to my body and believes Zen will have some useful insights on that topic.” Hanzo interceded swiftly. “She feels that more may also be possible.”

 

“More…?” Genji’s gaze immediately drifted downward to the center of his chest, then back to his face, the collision of expressions on his own a thing of horror and wonder to behold. “Can we talk a second? Privately?”

 

“Certainly.” Genji’s grip on his arm nearly yanked him off his feet.

 

“We’ll meet ya back at the main house!” Ranger McCree called after them, as Genji towed him in the direction of a particularly huge and densely foliated arbor on the far side of the greenhouse.

 

“Okay!” Hanzo shouted back, set his heels long enough to take some control of his own legs and muttered, “ _ Really _ , Genji? Aren’t you the one who’s always  _ encouraging _ me to --”

“Explain this to me.” Genji cut him off in a tone so  _ completely and absolutely _ like something their mother would have deployed that his brother surely would have cut his own tongue out if it were brought to his attention, and so Hanzo heroically forebore. 

 

“Briefly? Mrs. Amari and Jesse believe that the wound Minamikaze dealt me never healed properly.” Genji’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “They also believe that...it may be possible to correct that. That I may be what I once was again. Not a dragon-bearer but not…” 

 

“You are  _ not _ nothing. You are  _ not _ worthless. You have  _ never _ been.” He looked so distressed that Hanzo reached out and caught both his hands. “But I have to ask -- what’s the catch?”

 

“What makes you think there is one?” Hanzo asked, exasperated. 

 

“Hanzo, if I’ve learned  _ anything _ about how  _ any _ of this works, it’s that there is always a catch.  _ Always. _ Nothing about this  _ ever _ comes free, there’s always a cost, a price, and  _ someone _ has to pay it.” Genji’s grip tightened, his voice low and fierce. “You should know that better than anyone. You paid with everything short of your life.”

 

“Genji, you don’t have to be afraid here. Not of these people. I promise you.” Hanzo pulled his brother close. “They won’t hurt me -- they won’t hurt any of us -- they won’t ask more than we’re willing to give.” 

 

“For your sake, I’ll try to believe that.” Genji replied, roughly, and in it he heard the depth of his brother’s fear. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. The gods know I’ve asked them often enough for something to ease your pain. But please,  _ please _ , don’t walk into this blind.”

 

“I promise.” Hanzo replied, and held his brother tightly until he stopped shaking.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lengthy gap between updates -- not only did it take me slightly longer than I thought it would to write my piece of Blackwatch Confidential, it took me longer than I thought it would to write this chapter, as well. On the plus side, it's long! ^_^

Mrs. Amari’s consultation room was, to Hanzo’s great surprise, not in the basement. No, rather, it was in one of the four third story rooms that capped the  _ hacienda _ like turrets on a Pueblo Revival castle, perfectly square, walls aligned flawlessly along a true directional axis, ceiling mostly made up of a pyramidal skylight, picture windows longer than they were wide in the eastern and western facing walls. 

 

Nor were the walls painted a shade that tried frantically to be Santa Fe red and failed in any number of tragic ways, such as he was accustomed to finding in shops that purported to be herbalists but mostly sold psychoactives and their derivatives. Instead, they were a color too warm to be white and too lovely to be described as beige by anyone not suffering from a Philistinic lack of poetry in their soul, a creamy hue enlivened by a subtle hint of yellow and something that might have been handfuls of crushed mica added to the final glaze that caught the light pouring in from three directions and glinted gently. There was an astonishing absence of candles and not a single whiff of patchouli, though there was also no real furniture to sit on, either -- here, unique in the house as far as he could tell, the smoothly joined hardwood floor was covered in relatively small, richly pattern-woven area rugs and large floor pillows upholstered in jewel-toned silk, a transit hazard in a house where one of the residents was blind or the next best thing to it. 

 

A trio of dark hardwood storage chests sat against the southern wall, a practical concession rather than an aesthetic one, as their hostess crossed the room and opened them. “Please -- make yourselves comfortable.” 

 

“After you, darlin’.” Ranger McCree murmured at his shoulder, yielding the choice, and so Hanzo picked the nest of pillows closest to the western wall, a pleasantly thick rug that felt like wool under his hands, its pattern particularly elegant and complex. It gave his eyes something to do while he concentrated on inhaling peace and exhaling stress that wasn’t losing himself in the dark gaze of his rescuer.

 

Ranger McCree settled down on the rug next to his own and, taking the making himself comfortable thing entirely literally, stretched out on his side, the familiar indolence of it distracting Hanzo momentarily from his contemplation of the floor. His fingers remained long and strong but unclawed and his eyes remained warmly soothing brown behind extravagantly thick lashes and oh damn he was contemplating those qualities and also the perfectly sculpted nature of his lips and it took all his strength to look away. Genji and Zenyatta took up station together on the rug directly across from his own, his brother discreetly tucking a couple pillows behind his back so he could lean against the wall in a pose that loudly purported to be entirely at peace and harmless despite the prevailing glitter of his eyes. Hana and Lucio brought up the rear, carrying their bags and, before they sat, they both set up their recording equipment in a manner that clearly allowed them to cover the entire room and everything that went on in it.

 

Hanzo inclined a questioning brow at them and Hana shrugged slightly. “ _ Their _ idea.” She nodded in the direction of Zen and Ana.

 

“Since this is going to be a diagnostic procedure, having a reviewable record of it may be helpful.” Zenyatta replied, in response to his unspoken question. “If, of course, neither of you object.”

 

Hanzo considered that for a moment. “Not I. In fact, I’ll probably want to watch it.”

 

“Me neither. S’like to be a thousand times less embarrassing than any number of other recordings they’ve got of me already.” Ranger McCree flashed a grin and, behind the cover of couple pillows, his hand sought and found Hanzo’s on the rug, his grip gentle and comforting.

 

“Then we are in agreement.” He could hear the smile in Ana’s voice, even though her back was still turned on them. “Vanilla or cinnamon?”

 

“Pardon…?” Hanzo asked and there were the candles, one in each of her elegant, long-fingered hands. “Oh. Vanilla.” Cinnamon, he rather thought, might have a little too much in common with the unknown spice that pervaded the ranger’s scent to be properly soothing.

 

Ana set the candle in a dish of blue mosaic and lit it with a struck match, setting it on top of the storage box she closed, and turned to face them, a length of cloth looped over one arm and a smaller box of carved wood in both hands. “Dr. Tekhartha, young man, if you would be so kind as to spread out the chart for me.”

 

Zenyatta rose and took the cloth and together he and Genji laid it out on the floor in the central space, pinning it down at each corner with the heavy stone blocks Ana handed them from the box she held. From the quality of the sheen as the light touched it, Hanzo suspected the cloth was silk and very old, its weave almost impossibly fine, its surface painted with the outline of a human form, otherwise unadorned. The blocks, by way of contrast, were densely etched in hieratic characters on all their visible sides; Hanzo suspected they were completely covered.

 

“The purpose of this rite is to unbind the souls of two who tied together without bringing harm to them through the act.” Ana’s voice, in fact, had a touch of ritual about it, her pronunciation precise and formal. “For this to occur, we must know the shape of their souls and how they touch in order to part them cleanly. Jesse.”

 

The ranger released his hand rose, taking a moment to peel off his boots, and padded in stocking feet to the center of the room. The cloth was, fortunately, not as fragile as it looked as he took his place stretched out on it, too tall and too broad to fit inside the outline, the entire border of the thing only just large enough to contain him. The sunlight falling through the skylight overhead graced him in ways that even firelight did not, turning his skin tawny wherever it touched, bringing out the subtle hint of red in his hair, striking sparks of gold in the darkness of his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo saw Ana moving but paid it no attention until Hana squawked in distress and, by the time he looked, she had already taken off her eyepatch and was in the process of prying the eye out of her skull with a very audible and more than faintly horrifying  _ pop. _

 

“Oh. My. Actual. Fucking. God.” Hana sounded on the verge of chucking her cookies, for which Hanzo could not actually blame her since his stomach was also trying to get in on that action. “What. What are you. Is that -- “

 

Ana held it into the light -- a stone sculpted in the shape of an eye, banded and variegated shades of creamy green, iris and sclera alike carved with almost impossibly tiny hieratic characters. The socket in which it had lain was a twisted mass of scar tissue that she made no effort to conceal as she placed the stone in the very center of Jesse’s forehead. He didn’t flinch, either from the stone or from her touch, nor did he react as it began to glow from within, or as the blocks holding down the cloth on which he lay picked up the light, or as that viridian radiance swept the length of his body. Perhaps there wasn’t really anything to flinch from -- it didn’t look like it  _ hurt _ \-- and his expression remained serene even as the green faded, turning into a fine and delicate webwork of red and gold that rippled across the surface of his body, cohering into denser knots here, looser ones there, the whole visibly pulsing in time with his breath. Hanzo blinked and, for an instant, saw it again: the pattern, black geometric forms against golden brown skin, etched into his exposed forearms, a pattern that hadn’t been there a moment before. He reached up, rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again, it was gone, nothing to see but the flicker of red and golden light, the colors of his soul, of the cloak he had lent, that he felt laying across his shoulders even then.

 

A cool silver radiance joined it, and a sound like chiming bells. Zenyatta’s fingers were laced together in the mudraish form he recalled from the Student Union and, as they watched, spheres curled into existence around him -- nine spheres, to be exact, settling into orbit over the ranger, surfaces swirling cool blue and even cooler silver, cohering into forms that were almost words, almost a language that Hanzo knew.

 

“Zen,” Lucio’s voice, compared to Hana’s, was almost unnaturally steady. “For the recording: what  _ are _ those things?”

 

“My inner eyes.” Zenyatta replied serenely. “With them I can perceive the soul divorced of its relationship to crude matter -- true self is without form. Our bodies cannot, can never, express or contain all that we are.”

 

“You have  _ nine _ eyes?” Hana asked. “Also: I  _ totally _ could have done without that eye-popping thing, I can’t even handle the  _ concept _ of contact lenses,  _ warn _ a girl, would you?”

 

Zenyatta smiled and said nothing more.

 

“Every craft has its own guiding conceptions of the metaphysical, including the true anatomy of the soul.” Ana gestured, the slightest movement of her fingers, and the webwork lifted away from the surface of his flesh. She removed the eye-stone from his forehead and the web rose a bit further, hanging in the air high enough to let him roll out from beneath it without disturbing it as it took on a multidimensional quality, knots and nodes and interactions multiplying before their eyes, beautiful in their complexity. “In mine, the heart is the key of all will and thought, emotion and intention, the guide of all action, positive and negative.”

 

“In mine, there is no single aspect of being more important than any other, but rather a continuum of essential forces whose interaction creates the internal balance unique to each individual.” The nine spheres spread themselves length of the webwork. “Not all balance is necessarily harmonious -- adversity is the crucible of change and growth, after all, but a soul too long in a state of disquiet can be damaged in ways it is difficult to repair. Hanzo?”

 

Hanzo took a moment to untie and remove his own shoes, stealing another cycle of peace-stress breathing as he did so, and gingerly crawled out onto the cloth. To his surprise, it didn’t crinkle under his hands despite its appearance of extreme age and fragility. A wave of neuropathic tingles washed through his uncovered hand where he touched it, up his neck and across his scalp as he lay down; it felt  _ charged _ , like static electricity just before it let go, and he half expected to be shocked as he finished stretching his length. Instead the sensation rose and folded around him like an embrace, nerves thrumming gently, almost impossibly soothing.

 

“Are you ready, child?” Ana asked kindly.

 

“Yes.” Hanzo replied, his gaze automatically seeking his brother’s. Genji was leaning forward on his knees, eyes dragon-bright, one of Zenyatta’s hands resting comfortingly on his shoulder. Hanzo offered his best reassuring smile and then something small and warm came to rest on his forehead and the surge of power that washed through him swallowed his awareness of anything else.

 

It was, in a way, not unlike meeting Minamikaze’s eyes all those years ago: the same feeling of being  _ seen _ , of being  _ perceived _ and  _ known _ to the depths of his own being, without the accompanying sense of  _ stripped bare _ , of being measured and found wanting beneath his dragon ancestor’s pitiless judgment. Not  _ pleasant _ , precisely, but not  _ terrible _ , either, and as it faded he heard sharply indrawn breaths all around the room. He opened his eyes -- when had he closed them? He couldn’t remember -- and found Hana staring at him with undisguised horror, her hands pressed to her mouth, Lucio’s eyes enormous with shock, Zenyatta gently but firmly restraining Genji from reaching for him.

 

“I’m guessing it looks bad.” He said, dryly, not quite having the courage himself to look the length of his own body, to see what sort of mess the  _ naayéé _ had made of his soul.

 

“ _ Aniki _ ,” Genji’s voice was painfully unsteady, on the edge of tears, “doesn’t it  _ hurt? _ ”

 

“No. Not now, at least.” Even his arm, swathed inside its bandages, was offering him no discomfort; he wondered if it was an effect of the bespeaking or if he was just experiencing an abnormal allotment of good fortune, for a change. “Or I might not be feeling it yet. Zen? Mrs. Amari?”

 

“I am not interdicting any sensory response you might otherwise experience.” Zen replied, his tone planed utterly smooth of expression, itself an unnatural turn of events. 

 

“Nor am I.” Ana laid her hands, gently, on either side of his head. “Please do not move, child.”

 

He held utterly still while she lifted away the webwork the bespeaking had built and removed the eye-stone from his forehead. He could not quite bring himself yet to look at it directly, and so he rolled to the side and kept his back to it as he returned to his place, staring fixedly at a particularly bright flake of mica just below the window sash long enough that the ranger, his ranger, said softly, “Hanzo? Are you okay, darlin’?”

 

“I -- “ Hanzo took a deep breath, released it in a shuddering sigh that seemed to take a substantial chunk of the integrity of his insides with it. “Yes. I just...need a moment.”

 

A warm hand came to rest on his own and without thinking too deeply on it, he leaned into its owner, resting his face in the crook of the ranger’s neck and shoulder as he gathered the scattered bits of his courage back up. When he finally turned around, Jesse placed himself at his back, and it was all he could do not to press more completely into his side, settling for an arm and a shoulder and a hand laced together with his own in the pillows.

 

The webwork of his inner being was incomplete, at best, a tangled cat’s-cradle of threads in shades of darkest blue, some so deep they were nearly black, some wound together with others in knotwork patterns that echoed the ranger’s, orderly and purposeful, but still more, most he suspected, were snarled and twisted together in an effort to maintain some sort of internal cohesion. Woven among them, holding lengths of torn and frayed strands together across expanses of emptiness, were flickers of gold -- far more gold than red, to his eye, completing knots and nodes that would otherwise be broken, holding together pieces of his being that otherwise would be threadbare, at best, if they existed at all. His left arm, for example, trailed away in mid-bicep, the shredded ends of what had once been his unfulfilled bond fading into nothingness. 

 

And there, in the very center of his living essence, was the scar: a gnarled and withered mass of spiritual keloid, severed from the rest of his being, the place where all the damage began. It was ugly even to his own eyes, ruined and repulsive, the undeniable evidence of his own unworthiness.

 

“Han, you know me. I’m not a violent person by nature,” Lucio broke the appalled the silence, “but I think I’m going to have to punch a dragon in the face.”

 

A chorus of agreement met that sentiment and, to Hanzo’s surprise, it included Zenyatta. His spheres rotated between the two constructions, colors reflecting and blending across their surfaces until they flared like miniature suns, illuminating the bonds still linking them together -- not only the threads, which were enough and more than enough, but the passage of intensely bright golden light spilling into his being from the source at his side.

 

“On the one hand,” Ana said, neutrally, her face as still as a millpond, “I am impressed by the amount of healing that has already occurred. On the other, a great deal more needs to happen before we can even consider separating you.”

 

“I concur.” Zenyatta reached out and touched one of his spheres -- it rang a single silvery tone, echoed by the spheres to either side, thrumming the threads of the ranger’s being and his own. “They are resonating together too closely -- if we part them it will do far more harm than good.”

 

“How long d’you think, Doc?” Jesse asked; Hanzo was having difficulty finding his voice.

 

“It is...difficult to tell.” Zenyatta flicked a sidelong glance at Genji, who absolutely did not notice, his own gaze fixed on the construct. “Physical proximity may well speed the healing. It will certainly shorten the, ah, supply line.”

 

“Could it do him harm? To continue the connection to me?” Hanzo asked, his voice a toneless rasp and  _ for the sake of the one who lent you this _ ringing in his ears.

 

“There is always a risk.” Ana replied, calmly. “And a price to paid for taking them. Here and now, in this place, the danger is minimal -- Cerrillos is protected, strongly, against intrusions from Beyond, and even now my husband and Gabriel are reinforcing the border defenses.” Her expression softened a fraction. “It also matters that he has chosen this of his own will, even if you did not.”

 

“Hanzo.” Zenyatta said quietly. “It is not  _ impossible _ to separate you, if that is what you truly wish, but I counsel strongly against it for your own sake.”

 

“It’s not hurting me to do this, darlin’.” Jesse’s breath was warm against his cheek and the words were sweet, so sweet, in his ears and he  _ could not imagine _ how he had looked on this and found it beautiful, could not believe that he still did. “I got more than enough and you need it now. I’m sorry about the way it happened but not sorry that it’s doin’ you good -- what’s a few more days, if you can walk outta here more whole than you were comin’ in?”

 

“Very well.” Hanzo replied, softly, knowing defeat when he looked it in the eye. “What must we do?”

 

“We should --” Ana began.

 

“The scar is vibrating.” Genji said, quietly, and silenced whatever she was going to say.

 

“It  _ is. _ ” Lucio leaned closer. “Zen -- that note the sphere closest to it is playing, can you make it  _ louder? _ ”

 

Zenyatta touched a fingertip to that sphere and the tone it emitted filled Hanzo’s chest with cold and dark and the icy longing for nothing even as the scar shivered where it lay inside his being, beating in time with that painful music like a second, shriveled heart. They all watched, wordless, Jesse’s arm tightening around him, Zenyatta and Ana going carefully, professionally blank, Hana wiping tears from her eyes as though merely seeing it caused her grief.

 

It was Genji, again, who finally spoke what they all knew was true. “There’s something  _ inside _ it.”

 

*

It took two hours and the return of Mr. Wilhelm and Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad, bearing with them a multitude of objects both strange and intriguing, Roadie the Friendly Giant and his beanpole constant companion the excessively destructive mechanical genius, and also thirty pizza boxes from a local joint so famous even he had heard of it, for Hanzo to find a moment of peace by himself. A pretty decent amount of open space lay between the walls completely surrounding the compound and the contents of the compound itself, even with the greenhouses, and the prevailing chaos inside the house allowed him the snag half a box of pizza and the remains of a two liter of root beer and slip out into it to find a reasonably comfortable place to sit and get himself back in order. Or possibly to sulk. He didn’t  _ think _ he was sulking but he also had to admit that he wasn’t always the best judge of his own emotional reactions, particularly when the contents of his skull and the contents of his digestive tract were both equally contorted with an excess of feeling. Such as they were now.

 

He found his hiding spot on the far northern edge of the compound, a little alcove built out from the wall lined and roofed in a trellis heavy with vines that probably flowered in the spring, complete with a cushioned horse-shoe shaped bench and a marble birdbath a few feet away. He tucked himself into the most heavily shadowed corner and slurped down pepperoni and still moderately gooey cheese while thinking fixedly about nothing: not the now-impossible-to-overlook-or-deny state of his own fuckedupness, not how much the same was patently freaking out his brother and his friends, not the ranger, absolutely not the ranger, not the way the ranger felt pressed against his back, not the way the ranger’s hand felt entwined with his own, absolutely nothing about how the ranger’s soul and his own were tied together and how much he did  _ not _ , in fact, wish to be separated, how he couldn’t imagine  _ ever _ wanting to be separated, even once he was healed, or how purely and simply  _ good _ it felt to have that tie, that connection, to someone else, even if it came about in a terrible way. And there was, thinking about it, and he let his head fall back against the trellis.

 

“What if  _ he _ doesn’t really want to stay tied to  _ you? _ ” He said the words aloud because that was marginally better than keeping them penned inside his head, where they could ricochet around and do more damage. “Why would he? He practically said he didn’t back at the house and why would he ever do this in the first place?”

 

_ Because he’s a decent human being _ , the voice of reason interjected, finally overcoming the roar of egregiously melodramatic emo complete with extreme dynamic tempo shifts and, possibly, lyrics by Gerard Way otherwise commanding his internal narrative.  _ And also it’s his job. Remember the job? Ranger is not just a title. It’s what he does. He helps people. _

 

“That’s right. That’s true.” It was  _ weirdly soothing _ to admit that out loud, to force himself to look at the situation from that light, to remind himself that if  _ anyone else _ had turned up on the ranger’s doorstep that night he’d have done the same for them, that it didn’t actually  _ mean anything _ more than that. “He’s...simply the best human on Earth and you randomly encountered him in the middle of the night, on the ass-end of nowhere, just when you needed him most. Don’t make it more than that, you idiot.”

 

They had not, after all, talked and the odds that they would seemed to be diminishing by the moment. It was, after all, entirely probable that he was misreading the situation somehow -- it would not, in fact, be the first time.

 

He tried, and succeeded at least for now, not to think about the thing in his chest. He had the rather distinct feeling that wouldn’t be the case for much longer and embraced the not-thinking-about-it-for-now like a long-lost love.

 

He gathered up the remains of his meal and made his way back towards the house, using the bulk of the greenhouses as cover, and, as he approached, he heard voices coming from the back porch, itself partially screened by ornamental junipers. He recognized the speakers nonetheless and he slowed his stride and softened his steps and, no, no he was not going to hide in the bushes and listen to his brother talk to his ranger. He was not going to do that.

 

“You know, I was  _ really _ pretty dedicated to the idea of not liking you.”

 

He was totally doing that because that was Genji sounding faintly bemused instead of borderline homicidal, which he was inclined to consider an improvement.

 

“I kinda noticed that, yeah.” The ranger, by way of contrast, sounded at least moderately pleased. “For the record, I don’t blame you any and, also for the record, I apologize. I’d do a lot of things differently, if I could.” The sound of footsteps, with spurs, on the planks of the porch and Hanzo planted himself flat against the hacienda’s adobe wall and hoped against hope that the junipers completely concealed him. “Mostly, I’d try harder to make sure y’all were safe from the start.”

 

“That’s gratifying to know.” A sigh. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too. I’m just...really worried about him. Worried that this going to undo all the effort he put into rebuilding his life -- rebuilding  _ himself _ \-- after…” Genji’s voice trailed off.

 

“Apology accepted.” A pause. “If you don’t mind me sayin’, it doesn’t sound like you two came from the most nurturing environment.”

 

“Oh, it could be  _ incredibly _ nurturing -- provided you were willing to let yourself be nurtured in  _ exactly _ the direction the clan wanted you to go.” Hanzo could practically feel his brother’s bitterness from where he stood. “Do you know what the worst part of all this is, Ranger McCree? Our family did this to him.  _ Deliberately. _ They took him when he was barely old enough to speak in complete sentences and  _ way _ before he could really understand or consent to what they were asking of him, and they made him into a  _ sacrifice. _ They let Uncle Toshiro turn him into a younger, stronger version of himself and sent him off to perform an impossible fucking task and  _ when he fucking succeeded _ they couldn’t even treat him with the smallest bit of kindness when what they wanted him to do  _ broke _ him. I could forgive them a lot of bullshit but I will never forgive that.”

 

“We’re in more than passin’ agreement about that.” The sound of two bottles -- real bottle-capped bottles -- flicking open with a pop. “Seems to me like you’ve got something on your mind, Mr. Shimada --”

 

“Genji. Just...call me Genji. Everyone does.”

 

“Genji, then. Why don’t you let what’s eatin’ at you out before it gets down to the bone?” The ranger’s voice was close and Hanzo dared a glance, found him leaning on the roughly peeled wooden railing a double handspan away, if that, and ducked back under cover.

 

“He told me he thinks that your friend can...bring it back. What he lost.” Genji replied bluntly. “Is it true?”

 

“Ana thought so, yeah. Not sure if her opinion has changed any, after this morning, but I expect that’s something we’ll learn before too much longer. Doesn’t leap to diagnostic judgments, that one.” A pause. “You don’t look too happy about that, I gotta say.”

 

“I’m...not? Not really?” A significantly longer pause and a sigh. “That sounds terrible, I know, and I’m probably a horrible person and an even worse brother for even thinking of it this way but...it hurt him so badly to lose it and what if this  _ doesn’t work? _ What if it  _ can’t _ be healed,  _ can’t _ be fixed, what if Minamikaze  _ did _ something to him to make it impossible and  _ nothing _ can make it better again? He’s my brother, I love him, and I want him to be as happy and whole as he can be but, most of all,  _ I want him alive. _ I’m...not sure that this is the hope he could survive having crushed.”

 

They were both silent for a long time, long enough that Hanzo almost dared to move, and then Genji spoke again. “I didn’t believe in any of this, you know. Not a fucking bit. I thought they took my brother away from me for  _ nothing _ , for something that probably didn’t even exist, and even  _ he _ didn’t see what was wrong with that. It made me absolutely  _ crazy _ with frustration. And then...it  _ happened _ and it was  _ all real _ and the only person I knew who believed -- who believed with all his heart and soul -- was the one left out, the one who  _ wasn’t worthy _ , and I just…” He caught his breath in a sound painfully close to a sob and it was all he could do not to break cover and climb over the railing and wrap him up and tell him that everything would be all right. “I would give this to him if I could.”

 

“I know.” Softly. “That’s not terrible, Genji -- it’s an honest fear. And you ain’t anywhere near the worst brother I’ve ever met or heard tell of, so just don’t even think that way, all right? C’mon inside, we’ll find Ana and your sweetheart and we’ll have a talk. They can answer any questions you got better than I could, anyway. After all, I’m not much good at healin’.”

 

“...That was a really cheap shot and I’m sorry about that, too.”

 

“All’s forgiven, li’l brother. Let’s go.”

 

He waited until he heard both sets of footsteps cross the porch, and the sound of the door closing to step out of his concealment, to find his own way inside, his heart sore and strangely full all at once.

 

*  

 

Much of the chaos had subsided by the time Hanzo made his way back inside, creeping into the kitchen to dispose of his garbage and thence into the great room, a wide open space made smaller and more homey by the inclusion of couches and chairs, a perfectly circular coffee table, a state of the art holo-and-sound system in one corner, and the presence of Hana and Lucio and the contents of their packs spread out on said table while they worked. Or, rather, while Lucio worked. Hana was sitting cross-legged on a couch large enough to seat twenty, texting frantically and muttering under her breath about busybody relatives in at least two languages. 

 

Hanzo elected to make just enough noise to attract attention as he approached and Lucio looked up from his laptop’s holoscreen. “Hey, Han. How ya doin’?”

 

“I’ve felt better, but I’ve also felt significantly worse, so it actually evens out to...not bad?” Hanzo settled down on one of the free chairs. “Processing the footage?”

 

“Yeah. It actually turned out  _ way _ better than I thought it would -- I sorta thought the...magic stuff...would be a lot harder to record. Maybe that electromagnetic interference is just for, I dunno, hostile things? Questions to ask, at any rate.” He glanced over the top of the screen. “You want me to send you a copy?”

 

“Yes.” Hanzo replied, without hesitation.

 

“Will do. Hana? You want, too?”

 

“Yeah.” She looked up from her phone, visibly resisting the urge to throw it aside with great force. “Well, guys, the good news is this: due to the extent of the damage to the electrical substation near campus, and the fact that the power surge appears to have caused a subsidiary explosion and small fire in the Student Union, classes are officially cancelled until at least Tuesday. I’ve got like ten emails from my professors rescheduling exams and such, so you might want to check yourselves at some point. So -- if this...whatever we’re going to do is going to take more than a day we’ve got some time.”

 

“What’s the bad news?” Hanzo asked and began a search for his own phone, realized that while he had pockets they weren’t  _ his _ pockets because he was once again wearing the ranger’s clothes, and desisted. He could, after all, pretty clearly imagine the number of extremely! important!! emails!!! from his thesis advisor had multiplied like rabbits in springtime after the events of the previous evening and the mere idea of dealing with that on top of everything else made him seriously consider running screaming into the desert and letting the Serpent-Wolf have him.

 

“The bad news is my nosy aunt heard about the explosion and informed every single one of my relatives -- including my father -- that I might be dead using the Song family reunion email list. I swear, the next time I’m back home, I’m changing all the wifi passwords she has access to before I leave the country.” She flopped sideways on the couch. “I just spent the last hour reassuring everyone I know that I was  _ totally somewhere else _ when it happened and they’ve got nothing to worry about.”

 

He wondered, briefly, if their parents knew what had happened and decided that, if they did, Genji could handle that, as well, because the only thing more likely to drive him screaming into the jaws of damnation faster than his thesis advisor at that very moment was having to talk to his mother. And, unlike Genji, he usually  _ liked _ their mother. They were, at some point, going to have to tell them about the whole bloody thing but that was some time -- preferably whole years of time -- somewhere in the future on the other side of a great many things that could gracefully elided since the rest of their family was on the other side of the planet and the odds of anyone randomly turning up to directly report on events was somewhere between slim and none. He quietly thanked whatever gods and ancestors were still watching over him that Genji appeared to be growing past the impulse to send him back to Japan at the first available opportunity.

 

“This is  _ weird. _ ” Lucio muttered from the other side of the holoscreen.

 

“Weirder than usual or in line with the prevailing state of what the fuck?” Hana asked, pushing herself up on one elbow.

 

“Hard to say. Take a look?”

 

Hana groaned, rolled to the floor and crawled to his side. Hanzo, sensibly, took the removable seat cushion from his chair along with him. On the screen, Lucio was cleaning up and compiling the footage of the ranger’s procedure into a single document, the process momentarily paused.

 

“Now, tell me if you see this too, or if I’m just hallucinating.” He turned the playback on, advancing it slowly frame by frame, until it reached the point he sought -- the instant, point in fact, the markings that Hanzo had glimpsed twice now appeared on the visible skin of his ranger’s arms. “You two are seeing that, too, right? It’s not just me.”

 

“Yeah, I’m seeing it.” Hana agreed, frowning. “Does it turn up anywhere else in the footage?”

 

“No. It’s three frames at most -- I don’t remember seeing it at the time, most of us probably blinked and missed it.” Lucio flicked a glance at him. “You, too?”

 

“I see it. I’ve seen it before.” Hanzo admitted, reluctantly.

 

“Give.” Hana demanded. “Where and when?”

 

“Just after the original...incident. I regained consciousness briefly, after he brought me back, and I remember seeing him, leaning over me. He was covered in those markings all the way up his arms and down onto his chest and I remember being confused, then, because I knew he didn’t have any tattoos.” He reached out and pulled up the frame to get a better look at it. “I’m reasonably sure this is the same pattern I saw that night.”

 

“I can confirm the absence of generally visible tattoos.” Hana said.

 

“So we’re agreed on weird?” Lucio asked, sounding slightly desperate around the edges.

 

“Yes.” Hanzo replied soothingly. “It’s definitely stranger than usual.”

 

“What could that mean? Because stuff like this usually  _ means something _ , right? I mean, your tattoo and Genji’s tattoo are both magically important pieces of body modification, this  _ has _ to be something similar?” Hana mused aloud. “Have you tried running a pattern recognition image search, Lu?”

 

“I was about to do that.” He paused with his fingers on the keys. “Hanzo, you’ve spent more time with him than anybody -- has he given up anything about, like, where he comes from? Because between you and me that  _ kinda _ looks like the patterns you see in Navajo weaving and sandpainting but  _ not quite. _ ”

 

“Not really, no. He...hasn’t really spoken of himself. At all. Of course, most of the time I’ve spent with him has been in the middle of one crisis or another -- we’ve hardly talked about anything else.” That came out sounded a bit more like a whine that could be considered attractive in a grown-ass adult, but there it was. “Lu -- could you hold off on the image search for now? At least until I have to chance to, maybe, ask him about a few things?”

 

“Sure, man.” Lucio half-turned to face him. “Also: the offer stands. We will all  _ completely _ assist you in any way you require -- even Genji’s starting to come around.”

 

Hanzo moaned in despair and buried his face in his hands. “You lot are the worst. And by the worst, I mean the best. I don’t know what I’d be doing without you right now.”

 

“Awwwww.” He heard the sound of Hana’s phone taking a picture. “One day I’m going to run a Greatest Blushes of Hanzo Shimada feature on my stream and make you internet famous. Until then I --”

 

Voices echoed down the staircase on the far side of the room, along with footsteps. Lucio saved what he was doing and shut down; Hana backpedalled onto the couch and stuck her tongue out at him as she made her phone vanish into some well-hidden inner pocket of her backpack. Hanzo rose with as much dignity as he could muster and was still in the process of trying to look equally casual as Ana and Zen descended the stairs, trailing Genji, Jesse, both of Jesse’s fathers, and a sanity-blighting abomination of nature with them.

 

“What.” Hana practically teleported to the end of the couch closest to him and pointed with a decidedly tremulous limb. “Is. That.”

 

“I’m not sure,” Hanzo admitted, casually casting about for something to use as a weapon and, discovering nothing particularly heavy in easy reach, settled for a throw pillow.

 

Lucio, still sitting on the floor, looked up from packing away his equipment just as the abomination rounded the corner of the couch. “What -- oh. Hey, Dog. Yeah, c’mere.”

 

The abomination -- Dog? Its name? An aspirational utterance? Hanzo had no idea -- let out a distinctly puppylike whine and positively  _ bounded _ the rest of the way, covering Lucio’s face in slobbery kisses with a tongue entirely too long to be construed as natural and rolling over to demand a tummy rub. A tummy covered in spiky tufts of something that resembled scales more than fur but which visibly behaved like fur in a manner that probably would have made him nauseous had he not met Chad earlier in the day and come to a certain degree of mental peace with non-Euclidian pet geometry. “Yeah, you like that don’t’chu? Don’t youuuuu?”

 

“Yeah, that’s Dog.” Ranger McCree leaned down between them, resting one hand on the chair and the other on couch, and allowing both Hanzo and Hana to shrink back against him for protection. “We’re pretty sure he’s at least part chupacabra. I found him two years ago at the top of an arroyo after a real gullywashin’ thunderstorm -- probably got swept away from his mother, ‘cause he was just a pup at the time. We’re also pretty sure he’s at least part shepherd or border collie or some kind of herding breed. He’s got that instinct, y’know? So unless you’re trying to hurt Jack or Gabe or happen to be part goat or sheep, y’all are pretty safe.”

 

“But  _ Chad _ is where the naming privileges were suspended?” Hanzo asked, in an undertone.

 

The corner of the ranger’s mouth twitched. “Some crimes are more forgivable than others. Y’all wanna come to the kitchen? We’ve got an outline of a plan that we’d like to discuss with the whole gang.”

 

“Sure!” Hana chirped, and repeated her practical teleportation trick, vanishing around the corner into the kitchen before Hanzo even made it out of his chair.

 

“I’m beginning to think she doesn’t like dogs,” Ranger McCree mused and offered him a hand up.

 

“She’ll come around eventually.” Hanzo accepted the proffered hand and levered himself to his feet and found himself being drawn along by the ranger’s disinclination to let go.

 

_ It’s nothing it’s nothing it’s nothing, _ the voice of reason murmured, mantralike, in the back of his mind as the ranger surrendered his hand to pull out a chair for him at the kitchen table, and then seated himself immediately next door.  _ IT’S NOTHING IT’S NOTHING IT’S NOTHING _ , the mantra became significantly louder as the ranger’s hand rested, almost absent-mindedly, atop his own on the table and didn’t move except to pass him the honey for his tea as cups were passed and filled and a plate of sliced fruit and fresh if slightly squished pastries was set out.  _ It is absolutely nothing. For the love of the gods and all your ancestors, BREATHE. _ Hanzo breathed, inhaled soothing steam, and sipped, which had a salubrious effect on his nerves until he put his cup down and the ranger reclaimed his hand again.

“Pragmatically, what we are looking at here are three separate and distinct issues that must be resolved.” Zenyatta began, once everyone had poured and sipped and at least partially devoured a bun, “Firstly, Hanzo’s internal injuries, which must be healed as completely as possible. Secondly, the prevailing issue of the scars left behind my Minamikaze and the possibility of restoring the gifts he lost when that wound was inflicted, which cannot be dealt with until his soul is sufficiently healed to endure the strain. Thirdly, the Serpent-Wolf, which must be dealt with as emphatically as possible.”

 

“And by  _ dealt with _ we mean sent back where it came from, ideally in more than one piece.” Gabe the Suddenly Friendly Smog Monster Dad said, with a smile that would have been much more reassuring if it were a few centimeters shorter and contained slightly fewer sharp teeth.

 

“But before we can get to that, Gabriel,  _ there must be healing. _ ” At some point, Mrs. Amari had replaced her eyepatch, and further arranged her hair so part of the thick silver mass of it also shielded that side of her face. “Which is what we are going to focus on for at least the next few days. The bonds forged between you are allowing life and strength to flow from Jesse into you, Hanzo, but at a significant cost. He  _ must _ rest and, frankly, so should you. The medicine I made for you was intended to accelerate that process -- I have made more. For tonight, the plan is that you shall sleep together --”

 

Hanzo, fortunately, managed to spit his mouthful of tea out before it became lodged in any of the delicate air-carrying bits further south.

 

“--in the same room, at least, here at the hacienda.” Ana sipped her own tea, a certain amused twinkle in her eye. “In one of the third story ritual practice rooms. The physical proximity joined with the sleep and the medicine will allow healing forces to flow most smoothly between you.”

 

“In fact,” Jack chose that moment to interject, “you’ll  _ all _ be staying here tonight. We’ve got enough guest rooms for everyone and Rein spent part of the day reinforcing the barrier wards in the walls, as well as the border defenses and early warning system. Also my dogs will brutally murder anything that tries to come in here uninvited.”

 

“And if the dogs don’t do it, I  _ assure _ you that I will.” Gabe flashed that far-too-toothy-to-be-reassuring smile again and Hanzo, perversely, actually found it soothing. “You’ll all be perfectly safe here.”

 

“Are you okay with that, Hanzo?” Jesse asked quietly. “I know it’s kinda --”

“Yes!” A momentary scuffle ensued as Hanzo took control of the tabletop hand-holding and gave his ranger a comforting squeeze. “The principle isn’t...unknown to me. And if it helps you as well as me, that’s all for the best.”

 

For an instant, Jesse stared down at their joined hands as though he couldn’t imagine how they came to be in that configuration. Then he looked up, the slowest growing smile he’d ever bestowed spreading across his face, his eyes dark and warm. “Yeah, it will be. Just hit me if I snore too loud, I promise I’ll roll right over.”

 

* 

 

Supper that night consisted of an enormous salad, lovingly crafted from vegetables harvested from the greenhouses, served with morsels of herb-marinated chicken freshly cooked over charcoal grills set up in the central courtyard, the healthful qualities of which were almost immediately thereafter completely undone by s’mores, also freshly cooked over the still-hot charcoal. Hanzo and Jesse were, subsequently, given the task of scrubbing two dozen reusable marshmallow skewers clean of burnt-on sugary goo while the rest of the household went about making the guest rooms ready for use.

 

Hanzo was immediately suspicious. “They’re planning something.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure they are.” Jesse agreed, handing him a skewer to dry.

 

“All of them together or just a handful?” Hanzo asked, a slight trace element of anxiety curling around in his gut.

 

“Probably not all of ‘em. Roadie’s not the meddlin’ type and I don’t think Ana and Rein would really go in for any sort of shenanigans and they’d never involve Gabe because I’m pretty sure none of them are actively suicidal.” Jesse scrubbed thoughtfully for a moment. “Jack, on the other hand…”

 

“He does seem a bit...mellower.” Hanzo observed, doing his very best not to be caught appreciating the ranger’s profile as he bent to his task, the voice of reason maintaining a constant mantric refrain regarding appropriately low expectations in the back of his mind.

 

“He generally is -- he decided, quite some time ago, that he had precisely no fucks left to give and has been livin’ the life without shame ever since.” Jesse grinned and started in on the last of the skewers. “Of course, on those rare occasions that he discovers a wild give a damn growing in his otherwise barren fields, anybody who forces him to acknowledge its existence is going to experience the full force of a previously retired cryptid discovering he’s got something left to do. I almost gotta feel sorry for anybody who gets in his way in such circumstances.”

 

Hanzo finished drying and they dumped the bucket of sudsy water they’d been using into the recycler, replaced the skewers in their drawer, and peeked into the great room, where Genji and Zenyatta were occupying a portion of the twenty-seater couch while the too-obvious-to-be-natural sounds of fitted-sheet wrestling echoed through the house. Genji glanced up and motioned them over, handing Hanzo his tablet as he sat. “There’s the latest. According to the local news, the Student Union’s locked down until the fire marshal can ascertain the extent of the damage and its structural stability. Check out the pictures from outside.”

 

Hanzo leaned back so Jesse could see, as well: several shots, from both news photographers and random bystanders, from last evening and that morning. In at least one, a fairly mountainous form could be just barely seen retreating off the edge of the shot, mostly obscured in the dark; in a few more, the golden-green sparks of Genji’s eyes were clearly visible to anyone who knew what they were looking at, even if the rest of him was blurred by smoke and the glare of emergency lights. The next morning, the pictures were far more sedate, fire police vehicles and campus rentacop carts and yellow tape except on the far side of the quad where four identically dark and uncomfortably familiar HUVs sat, unmarked, along with a lone sedan with the Department of Energy seal on its driver’s side door.

 

“Hana’s MIB greyfaces?” Hanzo hazarded a guess.

 

“Yes.” Genji nodded. “ The Technological Advancement and Logistical Operations Network geek squad. I got a couple emails from the guys in my project group -- they’re all over the School of Interactive Game Design apparently.”

 

“Albuquerque, too. They’re settin’ up a long-term observation post at the old airport.” Jesse added, thoughtfully. “This...might be something that’ll need to be managed, dependin’ on what they’re up to at your school.”

 

“ _ Hanzooooooooooo. _ ” Hana chose that moment to call, sweetly, from somewhere in the not so stygian depths of guest rooms. “Can you come here for a minute? I need help that only you can provide!”

 

“She’s up to something, right?” Hanzo asked Zenyatta, in the full knowledge that his brother would never give up a friend, even to him.

 

“Yes.” Zenyatta admitted, without looking up from his tablet, on which he seemed to be dealing with approximately four million urgent emails of his own. “I advise you to go put your foot in the trap before she decides to come looking for you. It will be faster and less painful that way.”

 

“Thank you, Dr. Tekhartha, I think I will.” He handed Genji’s tablet back and went fearlessly to face his doom.

 

His doom met him at the door to the northernmost guest room where by mutual agreement she and Lucio would be sacking out for the night; Genji and Zen were in the much larger guest  _ suite _ across the hall. Hana closed the door quietly as he entered, Lucio glanced over his shoulder, somewhat guiltily, and turned around, a brown paper lunch bag in his hands. Hana’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Hanzo, my friend, I admit that I lied. I don’t really need you for anything because my father taught me how to do hospital corners when I was, like, seven. No, what we have here for you...is a gift.”

 

“A gift.” Hanzo reached out and gingerly accepted the package from Lucio’s hands; it was surprisingly hefty.

 

“We all contributed a little something.” Hana smiled sunnily and Lucio, he thought, managed to look only slightly like he wanted to fall through the floor and disappear into the core of the Earth. “Don’t open it now. Do it later.  _ In private. _ And here’s your necessaries bag -- courtesy of Ana and Reinhardt.” It was a plain blue nylon weekender bag with his name in masking tape on the side. “Everything you’ll need to get through the next few days.”

 

“...Thank you. I think.” He eyed them both with an uncomfortable, uneven mixture of suspicion and gratitude. “There’s nothing in here that I’ll find mortally embarrassing, is there?”

 

“Of  _ course _ not. Would we do that to you?” Hana was the picture of wounded pink-clad innocence. “Tell him, Lu.”

 

Lucio opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. A look of intense pain, apparently compounded of equal parts bedrock honesty and inherent personal decency at war with whatever lay within that plain brown sack, came across his face and, evidently before he could think better of it, he blurted out. “It’s condoms. And a bottle of lube. And some of Zen’s special massage oil. And a little sweet love down by the fire mix I put together this afternoon on a sound chip, you just have to stick it in your phone. But mostly condoms. Like, six boxes in all different sizes because, y’know,” he made a helpless gesture with both hands that implied things both flattering and terrifying, “it’s not like we could ask? Or take measurements?”

 

“Traitor,” Hana muttered.

 

“Thank you, Lucio.” Hanzo replied, and tucked the little brown sack into the much larger bag, which seemed to be filled with packages of underwear and several sets of clothing with tags still attached. “And you’re right: I don’t actually find that embarrassing and I’m touched that you thought of this. Please hand me that pillow?” Lucio did so and Hanzo screamed into it, then handed it back. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you but, really, thank you.”

 

“This is a  _ chance _ , Han.” Lucio replied. “I’m not gonna say ‘now or never’ because who knows but...just tell him how you’re feeling.”

 

“...I will consider it.” He picked up his bag and stepped back out into the hall, where Genji was loitering, a picture of pretend innocence. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”

 

Genji looked, for an instant, deeply affronted before the expression dissolved into a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen, the extra-large ones are the oldest so, uh, don’t use them if you don’t have to? And the massage oil has some mildly consciousness-expanding properties that you should probably talk about before you use it. And --”

 

“ _ Walking away now. _ ” Hanzo sang and did so, tucking his bag firmly under his arm and offering his brother a rude gesture over his shoulder as he did so.

 

Genji’s laughter chased him down the hallway.

 

His ranger met him at the base of the great room stairs. “I have received a request from Miss Ana that we start makin’ our way upstairs so that she can execute  _ her _ preparations before it gets too late because somethin’ somethin’  _ kids these days don’t know the value of a good night’s rest _ and furthermore  _ whippersnappers _ or words to that effect. You want the shower first?”

For a moment, Hanzo’s brain completely shut down. Despite his efforts at attaining mental and emotional preparation for that moment, he found his inner arrangements completely inadequate to the task of even contemplating the idea of spending any significant amount of time in close quarters with his ranger, McDreamy, McObjectivelyPerfect, McBestHumanOnEarth, who was now staring at him with undisguised concern. He knew, rationally, because the voice of reason was actively attempting to cudgel his brain into a state of basic functionality, that the appropriate response to this situation was to say something and yet the parts of him responsible for such ordinary workaday human reactions were busy running around with their hair on fire, making noises incompatible with the biological structures of his throat. Finally, after an excruciatingly lengthy moment during which Zenyatta looked up from his pad with outright worry written on his face and the ranger reached over to squeeze his hand comfortingly, he managed a nod. Not a suave nod, or even a relaxed nod, but at least a wordless gesture that the ranger could correctly interpret as acceptance.

 

“All right, darlin’,” Ranger McCree --  _ Jesse, his name is Jesse, for fuck’s sake, he’s said you can call him by his name _ \-- did not release his hand and spoke in the sort of low, soothing tone he suspected he’d use on small, skittish chupacabra-mix puppies to keep them calm while he crept close enough to scoop them up, “let’s go upstairs.”

 

Hanzo did not, in fact, make use of the shower -- in the midst of everything else, nobody remembered a waterproof covering for his bandages and neither he nor Jesse wanted to spend the time necessary to rewrap his arm, even though it would push the actual moment of full-blown mental crisis off for at least forty minutes. Instead, he washed his face, making certain no stray bits of gooey marshmallow carbon were stuck in his beard, brushed his teeth, and changed into the pyjamas acquired for him, a pair of soft flannel night pants and long-sleeved sleep shirt that came to mid-thigh. He paused for a moment at the base of the short, gently curved staircase that led up to the eastern ritual room, a span of no more than eight steps, which yawned before him like the entrance to a peril beyond imagination.

 

_ You can do this. _ The voice of reason was blending together with the voice of bad decision-making in his skull, creating a weird bitonal effect that would not have been out of place in a horror flick.  _ It’s only one night. You can do this. Walk up the fucking stairs or he’s going to finish his shower and find you standing here like a malfunctioning holomannequin and you don’t want that, do you? _

 

He did not, in fact, want that at all and it was all the impetus he required to scurry up the stairs and into the ritual space. The bedroom. The ritual space. The bedroom. The ritual bedroom space and the sight of exactly one -- one -- bed was quite enough to break that inner cycle with an audible cracking sound. One bed. It was, admittedly, a large bed -- Queen sized, at least -- an inflatable mattress with some sort of internal air pump plugged into the wall and tagged with both reflective tape and a few glow-in-the-dark tabs to make the cord visible once the lights were turned off. Four pillows. No sheets, but what looked like individual sets of blankets and one heavy comforter folded neatly over the foot. A small table on each side, one holding a bedside lamp (turned on) and the other a digital clock. A ceramic space heater far enough back to pose no risk to the substance of the bed. It was, in fact, markedly cooler there than in the rest of the house, and though he couldn’t feel any particularly noticeable draft, the wind had risen quite clearly since they had come inside, whipping dust devils down the dirt-and-gravel road, tossing the branches of the trees visible from his high, windowed vantage point. Clouds were moving in, rapidly chasing the last of the light from the sky, and if he’d had his shot composition camera handy, he might have tried to capture the strange beauty of it for later consideration in watercolor.

 

“Hanzo?”

 

He just barely managed to avoid leaping out of his skin, or through the window, though he did drop his bag, and he did plaster his back against the glass as though he were seriously considering it as a means of escape. Ranger McCree --  _ Jesse _ \-- stood just inside the room and set his own, rather smaller bag down carefully. “Everything all right?”

 

“Yes.” It even managed to emerge reasonably non-squeaky. “I was...just watching the clouds.” That was stupid. Unutterably stupid. “I mean --”

 

His ranger joined him by the window. “I know -- the sky’s wild and beautiful tonight. If the moon manages to come out, it’ll be even wilder.”

 

“You think?” When had Jesse taken his hand? He hadn’t noticed, being too busy admiring his freshly washed qualities and had he trimmed his beard? It looked like he trimmed his beard.

 

“Oh, yes. It’ll be full in a couple days and the full moon over the hills and the desert are most definitely a sight that you will want to see.” He drew Hanzo away from the window. “Mighty chilly over there, darlin’.”

 

Hanzo shivered and it had nothing to do with the ambient air temperature. “Just a little.”

“Your hands are like ice.” The ranger disagreed, gently. “Bet your feet aren’t much warmer.” With his free hand, he twitched back the covers on one side of the bed. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and I’ll see if we can’t get something to warm you up a little?”

 

“That’s...not a bad idea, actually. Tea?” The mattress was surprisingly firm for something filled with air, the pillows squishily comfortable, and a cup of hot tea sounded like exactly the sort of thing that would settle his nerves and allow him to behave like a basically human being while in close proximity to...whatever it was that the ranger was to him.

 

“As you wish, darlin’.” The ranger --  _ Jesse, dammit _ \-- tipped his invisible hat again and disappeared back down the stairs.

 

Hanzo took the opportunity to slip back out from underneath the covers and drag his bag closer, extracting a pair of socks because his feet actually were uncomfortably cold and rearranging the contents to put the plain brown bag closer to the top. Not in easy reach precisely but...definitely closer. Then he lay back and nestled himself down into his personal mass of blankets, watching the moon-silvered clouds race past through the skylight.

 

“Ana recommended green tea due to the hour and the whole having to get to sleep thing.” This time, he heard Jesse’s quiet tread on the steps and didn’t jump anywhere as he spoke. “I was pretty sure y’all would approve that suggestion so I just rolled with it.”

 

“Green tea is fine, thank you.” Hanzo sat up, accepted the cup, and found its contents perfectly brewed, unsweetened and not the slightest trace bitter; the first sip warmed him to his toes. “Wonderful.”

 

“Your brother coached me, I’ll admit.” Jesse turned and fiddled with his own bag for a moment, coming up with an offensively bright yellow pair of socks with little rubber treads on the bottom. “Uh...may I?”

 

“Wear those socks? I don’t see why not, it’s your -- oh. Ohhhh. Yes. Of course.” Hanzo pulled himself into a sitting position as the ranger twitched down the covers on his side of the bed.

 

The socks went on before the ranger actually settled down, adjusting his weight gingerly as the mattress sank a bit and then rebounded, laying stretched out on his side in that disquietingly familiar manner as Hanzo sipped at his tea. “Better?”

 

“Much.” Hanzo set aside his empty cup and gazed thoughtfully down at him. “May I ask you a personal question?”

 

“Given the amount of personal stuff you’ve had t’tell me, seems only fair if you do. More than one, even.” A little smile took up residence at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were too dark in the dim light to reveal if it reached them. “Fire away.”

 

_ God job, NOW YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY ASK HIM A PERSONAL QUESTION. _ The voice of reason, in sarcastic mode, was fundamentally indistinguishable from Genji. Unfortunately, it also had a point, and for a moment Hanzo wished he hadn’t drunk all his tea so he could stall a few more minutes by sipping at it. “This...this is going to sound...stupid.”

 

“No such thing as a stupid question, darlin’.” And somehow his hand was in Jesse’s again without him even noticing it.

 

_ Well. Do it. Say it now and get it over with quickly. _ “If...once all this is over...I were to ask you to dinner, as a token of my gratitude, would you accept?”

 

“I’m afraid not.” He didn’t even think about it, which was shocking enough that Hanzo processed the words without even the slightest trace of pain, though the grip on his hand tightened nonetheless. “Hear me out, though. It’s not because I wouldn’t  _ want _ to, not that  _ at all. _ It’s because I promised my Nana McCree that I’d never accept any kind of pay for the use of my gifts -- not money, not booze, not food, not...anything, ‘cause if I did, I’d be doin’ it for my own profit and not because it was the right and good thing t’do, and that’d stand the chance of turnin’ whatever I did down a wrong path in the end. So, no, I could not accept an invitation to dinner offered in the name of gratitude.” The smile camping out at the corners of his mouth turned wry. “Technically, I don’t even get paid for the whole monster hunting aspect of this job -- that’s a totally uncompensated sideline, enforced by contracts signed in blood and an assortment of oaths.”

 

“So…” Hanzo said slowly, “if I asked you out because...I wanted to go out with you...you could say yes.” 

 

“Hilariously enough, yeah. Yeah I could.” The smile grew, if anything, wryer. “I can  _ always _ say yes if the other party doesn’t actually  _ care _ , of course.”

 

“Why would your grandmother ask such a --” He swallowed the  _ terrible _ before it could slip out, “heavy promise of you?”

 

“Partly tradition. It was the way of her people -- paying for a blessing, or a healing, makes it a mercenary transaction, not the way a holy person workin’ for the good of the people and the community should behave. Partly, I think, her way of tryin’ to keep me on the straight and narrow. It was the last thing she asked of me before she passed, and I think she knew I’d fall off the path without some strong encouragement otherwise.” The expression on his mouth could not, strictly speaking, be called a smile any longer, wry or otherwise. “As it happened, I took that tumble anyway but in the end I got picked up and dusted off instead of the less pleasant possible outcomes.”

 

“By your parents?” He twisted his wrist slightly, and wound up with the ranger’s hand cradled in both of his own, stroking his thumbs across his palm, striped with callus.

 

“Yeah.” A little sigh. “Pop-Pop and Nana McCree -- they brought me up from short pants, but they both passed away within months of each other when I was fourteen. Gabe and Jack found me shortly thereafter, not before I managed to fall in with some bad company, but they helped me put things right and now we mostly keep each other out of trouble.”

 

“Except when trouble comes wandering up to your door.” Hanzo observed lightly.

 

“Well, y’know. Occupational hazard.” His grin was sly and lit his face. 

 

“Why the National Park Service?” Hanzo’s gaze flicked to the arrowhead emblem on his chest. “And you lecture at the university?”

 

“Honestly? The best of several worlds. I wanted to stay here -- this place is in my blood, as much as any place is, and the NPS needed, then and now, resident rangers with gifts that can address the dangers to be found in these parts --”

 

“In the Red Zone, you mean?” Hanzo looked up at the sound he made. “What?”

 

“I thought I encouraged you in admittedly somewhat indirect terms to keep your distance from all this, for your own safety?” Jesse asked, with a certain evident asperity.

 

“You told me to stay out of the  _ desert _ not out of the  _ library. _ ” Hanzo replied, unimpressed.

 

“Okay, I can’t really argue that point.” Jesse shook his head. “Yes, in the Red Zone. The fabric of the world’s been wonky here forever but it took a turn for the worst after the stuff that went down during the Omnic Crisis and it takes a lot of hands -- a lot more than we’ve ever actually  _ had _ t’be honest -- to keep things even as under control as we’ve got ‘em right now. We’ve got some civilian volunteers, and some of the communities out here are totally self-sufficient when it comes to such things, but otherwise? We’re spread few and far between.”

 

“And here I am, dragging you away from your more important duties.” Hanzo felt a bitter smile trying to take up residence on his own face.

 

“No. Don’t ever think that.” Jesse reached up and cupped his cheek. “Seeing you safe and well isn’t the  _ lesser _ duty. You really want to know  _ why _ I picked this particular path? Because I can help people  _ and _ the world we live in at the same time. Sometimes that means shootin’ packs of rovin’ monsters in the face and sometimes that means protectin’ one special person. That’s where we are right now. And, for the record? Ana’s right. Most people only find this place for a reason, and I’m sure you’re not an exception. You and your people are  _ supposed _ to be here now, even if I wish I could hide you someplace even safer.”

 

A gentle sound, halfway between a cough and a laugh, came from the door and they both turned to find Mrs. Amari standing at the top of the steps, a covered mug in each hand. “Gentlemen, your medications. I suggest you make yourselves comfortable, because they will take effect  _ quickly _ .”

 

They didn’t  _ quite _ spring apart like guilty teenagers but they did put some distance between, Hanzo squirreling down beneath his blankets and Jesse pulling up the comforter to cover them both. The cup that Mrs. Amari handed to him was the same golden color and herbaceous flavor as the blend still sitting in his cabinet at home, sweetened with a spoonful of honey, the fragrance alone beginning the process of weighing down his eyelids. Jesse drank his in three hard swallows and handed his cup back with a grimace.

 

Mrs. Amari reached over and tousled his hair. “Rest, you two. Don’t try to set the alarm, neither of you will hear it where you’re going.” She turned out the light. “Be at peace.”

 

“Easy for her to say -- that stuff she makes me drink tastes like boiled goat crap.” Jesse muttered. “I’ll be tastin’ for  _ hours _ no matter how deep I sleep.”

 

“Would you like a taste of mine?” Hanzo asked, dreamily emboldened, and rolled onto his side, erasing the distance between them.

 

“Hm?” Jesse asked and looked down and for the second time that day, Hanzo kissed him.

 

It was not a chaste kiss.

 

“Oh, darlin’,” Jesse whispered against his mouth, as he pulled back, and licked his own lips, as though he were trying to gather the last of the honey-sweet flavor from them.

 

“A good night to you, my ranger.” Hanzo whispered back, and his eyes were closed and his head resting on his ranger’s chest before he could hear any reply.

 

*

 

When he woke, some time later, Hanzo had no idea where he was.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

 

_ The darkness that enfolded him faded slowly into silvery brightness. The comforting warmth that enfolded him faded slowly into cold, the wind the whispered around him where he stood, pressing a cloak of red and gold to his shoulders and back, lifting the mass of his hair and combing through it like wandering fingers. The memory of a kiss clung to his lips and he refused to relinquish it, refused to let the sweet promise of it fade, nor the bitterness of it from his tongue.  _

 

_ He opened his eyes and knew himself to be alone. Knew also that he should not be, and it was that knowledge that moved him, without looking back, to follow the path that lay at his feet. It glittered silver with starlight, with moonlight, the golden of the sun, the white at the heart of lightning, and he ran forever, or perhaps less, until he came to a place where the canyon walls rose high on both sides, high enough to blot out the rising moon and many of the stars, high enough to cast canyon floor into shadow, that the only light came from the shining path itself.  _

 

_ He sensed no evil, no unseen horror lurking in the darkness, no sleeping hunger for human flesh, human blood, neither cruelty nor malice bound by a strong and ancient will. He also felt himself still alone, and knew that he should not be, and so he continued on, the path beneath his feet flickering with fragments of rainbow-bright color. _

 

_ He ran again for long, or perhaps not long at all, and came to a place where two enormous fingers of stone jutted out of the canyon floor, standing sentinel upon the path, their tips white as with snow, their base a tumble of rocky scree and fragrant stands of juniper and cedar and pinõn. He sensed no evil as he walked among them, no unseen peril in the cool and ambrosial air beneath their branches, no slumbering savagery or bloodthirst, no hatred or spite bound by a strong and ancient will. _

 

_ The softness of the fallen needles beneath his feet and the gentle perfume of the air slowed his steps from a headlong run to a walk and, though he was alone and knew that he should not be, that was how he came to the end of the trees and to the base of the sentinel rocks. It was there, while walking in their shadow, just off the path itself, he saw a flicker of firelight shining against the high red-banded stone, smelt its incense-rich smoke as a mischievous breeze swirled it about him, and heard, as he left the path and walked closer, a gentle voice singing softly. _

 

_ Both the smoke and voice rose in a thin wispy pillar from a hole in the sandy, rocky ground -- a hole that also held the smoke-blackened top of a ladder. He knelt, and in the light of the fire below, he saw that the ladder had four rungs. Saw also that the fire burned in the midst of a large chamber just below the stony skin of the world and that next to it an old woman sat, singing softly to herself. As he gazed down, she looked up, and smiled, and he knew her face at once. _

 

_ “What are you waiting for, child?” Grandmother Sumiko asked, in a voice that rasped and crackled. “Another summons?” _

 

_ He stepped down onto the topmost rung of the ladder and there he paused. “You cannot be what the face you wear claims. Who are you?” _

 

_ “Can I not?” The old woman laughed softly, her voice a rasp and a crackle like autumn leaves blowing across weathered stone steps. “Come, child, and join me at my fire.” _

 

_ He stepped down onto the next rung of the ladder and there he paused. “No, you cannot. Who are you?” _

 

_ “Truly, child, you are as stubborn as I have been told.” The old woman shook her head, and the firelight caught in the white of her hair and the golden of her eyes. “Come and warm yourself beside my fire and we shall talk.” _

 

_ He stepped down onto the third rung of the ladder and there he paused. “Who told you I was stubborn? And who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?” _

 

_ “One who is close kin to you and near enough to claim some trace of kinship with me.” A hint of humor twinkled in her bright eyes. “Come, child, you have traveled far to see me.” _

 

_ He stepped down onto the fourth rung of the ladder and there he paused. “Have I? Who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?” _

 

_ “I am the one who wove together the frayed and broken threads of your soul, child.” She raised one frail and fine-boned hand and he saw, as she did, the strands of red and gold, blue and silver, wound around her fingers. “Come -- my fire is warm, you have traveled far to see me, and we have much to speak of before the night is over.” _

 

_ He set his feet upon the sandy floor of her chamber and settled next to her on one of the many seats gathered around her fire, one that glittered sharply in its light. “I owe you more than I can hope to repay, Grandmother, and all of my thanks.” _

 

_ “Hush, child. You owe me nothing.” And she handed him a plate of food and a cup of something steaming warm. “Eat. Drink. Warm yourself.”  _

 

_ He ate, and the food was delicious, the flavors of all his favorite things to eat spreading across his tongue and it was all he could do to remember his manners. He drank, and it was sweeter than the sweetest honey and more bitter than the ashes of ten thousand broken dreams and he knew, as it slid down his throat, that he had tasted its like before and would do so again. He breathed in the perfume of the burning wood and its warmth sink into his flesh, into his bones and his blood, and knew as he did so that he was no longer alone. _

 

_ “He is here, isn’t he?” Hanzo asked, throat tightening and eyes stinging for no reason  he could name. _

 

_ “He is.” Grandmother Sumiko replied, gently. “Let me see your arm.” _

 

_ Hanzo shrugged out of the sleeve of his yukata and offered her his left arm. In the firelight and the shadows that fire cast it was even more hideous, his fingers gnarled and twisted, tipped in chipped and broken claws, the skin furfuraceous with mingled patches of scales and scars and the gaping pit where the unnatural eye had opened. She laid her palm, warm and soft and yet strong, upon his breast and stroked from there to the tips of his fingers, once, twice, thrice, and after each stroke more of it faded -- not only the distortion of his flesh and bone, but the tattered remnants of the tattoo he had worn since his fifteenth year, as well. At the end of the fourth stroke it was entirely gone and all that remained was smooth, unmarked skin, healthy flesh, undamaged bone, fingernails instead of claws. _

 

_ “I am sorry, my child, but that had to be done. That bond was tainted by the Serpent-Wolf’s touch, its violation of your flesh and soul -- keeping it would bring you only sorrow.” She closed both hands around his own and pressed it gently.  _

 

_ He closed his eyes and his soul ached at the loss, at the knowledge that hope was now gone forever, and in the depths of his being he heard a coldly serpentine voice whisper  _ **_you are not a dragon and you will never be one._ **

 

_ “That is true.” A warm hand cupped his chin. “You are not a dragon. But there are more things in this world than dragons and nothing, child. There is more in you than that.  _ **_He_ ** _ knows this to be true and so must you, to be complete, to at last be whole.” _

 

_ “Why does he believe such things of me?” Hanzo asked, desperately. “Who is he to have such faith in what I might be?” _

 

_ “He is the one who shared his soul with you.” Grandmother Sumiko replied, and released his hand, spreading the fingers of her own to show the threads of red and gold, blue and silver, yet wound around them. “Who shares it still, for at least one night longer, to make certain that the strength you will need is restored. And no, child, he does not do this for everyone who comes to him in peril. It is in you that he saw another so worthy that he took this risk to save you and pays the price for doing so willingly.” _

 

_ “But --  _ **_why_ ** _?” Hanzo asked, distraught. _

 

_ “Oh, child.” Grandmother Sumiko smiled sadly, and shook her head. “I cannot show you what you will not choose to see -- but you will understand, before the end. Of that I am certain.” She reached up and brushed a lock of hair from his face. “Just as I know you have come here for a purpose.” _

 

_ “The Serpent-Wolf.” Hanzo replied, and knew as he said it that it was true. “I thought I came here for another reason, but I was wrong -- I came here because the Serpent-Wolf was here, waiting for me.” _

 

_ Grandmother Sumiko bowed her head in something like grief and something like affirmation. “It was. It has waited long for you -- for centuries it has waited, knowing that one day you would return to this place.” She rose, with slow care, the silk of her kimono gleaming in the firelight, crimson and golden and purple maple leaves drifting across a field of black, the silvery threads of impossibly tiny embroidered spiders hiding among them glinting as she moved. “Come, child.” _

 

_ He rose, and followed as she crossed out of the warm circle of the firelight, to the far side of the chamber where a door pierced the wall, covered in a gorgeously woven blanket. Beyond lay a corridor, its walls rough stone, its floor sandy, from which branched other curving paths, other gently rounded rooms. _

 

_ “You are not the first to come to me seeking the knowledge of who you are and who you might become -- but that is not a question I can answer. You are not Naayéé Neizghání nor are you Na’ídígishí. You know your mother. You know your father. You know the names of all your kin to Minamikaze himself, less merciful than even Jóhonaa’éí.” Her voice was soft and she spoke as they walked. “A foul and mighty thing of the naayéé hunts you for more than your life, more than the joy of devouring your flesh and grinding your bones, it lusts for your soul and what sleeps within you yet -- and it is not for me to awaken it. Nor may I place in your hands the naayéé ats’os, nor teach you the song of its use, for even if I did, it would not answer -- your songs of magic are not ours, nor are ours for you. But there is something that I may give to you.” _

 

_ They reached the end of the corridor -- a round chamber, smaller than the one they had left, its walls carved with dozens of niches, some large, some small, each holding an object, no more than one. In the very center of the room, sitting upon a large, flat-topped stone, sat a lamp -- a lamp of wood and paper, its light soft and dim, its shape unsettlingly familiar and yet incongruous to this place. It reminded him of home. _

 

_ “The first naayéé were born of cruelty and anger -- the folly of two who loved one another but who allowed their bond to curdle into rancor and division, to the great harm of all.” Grandmother Sumiko said quietly, as she searched among the niches, her shadow dancing across the walls as she moved. “The children birthed of it were seen as monsters and abandoned to die and thus was the fate of humanity nearly sealed. They did not die, those twisted and unwanted things, but instead grew to become monsters in truth that preyed upon the people that had made them and then cast them aside, hungry and full of hate and rage.” _

 

_ “You feel for them. The naayéé.” In the corner of his eyes, the shadows danced: twisted monster-things plucking smooth-limbed human creatures from mountain paths, the banks of rivers, the midst of villages.  _

 

_ “I do. They did not ask to be born. The ones who made them knew even then that good and evil reside in all things but they could not see beyond the horror of form to imagine what else they could be. And thus the fate of the naayéé was also sealed.” Her voice was soft with sorrow and the shadows danced: a warrior walked among them, scything through them like a sickle through ripe grain. “Jóhonaa’éí the sun, who sired his share of naayéé, also fathered the heroes who would kill them -- Slayer of Monsters, whose mother was Changing Woman, and Born of Water, whose mother was White Shell Woman, whose flint knives and lightning arrows killed all but those whose evil was necessary upon the world, for all things must reside in balance, even monsters and men. And for many, many years beyond telling that balance persisted and the number of humans swelled in the world again, and the naayéé took only what was theirs to take. Ah, there it is.” _

_ She turned, and in her hands was a small bundle: a length of deep blue silk knotted together with bright yellow wool to make a pouch, knotted shut. “The one who brought this here came from the west, after a long winter of fear among the people. The numbers of naayéé had waxed great again, though no monsters were born among the clans dwelling in this land. Nor did the songs and charms known to bind them or drive them off or slay them perform the task for which they were made. Truly, these monsters were alien to this place and their hungers were more terrible than most and, worst of all, they stole the shape of Ma’iitsoh the Great Wolf and his children to aid in their depredations.”  _

 

_ The shadows danced: wolf-things with too many joints and too many legs, spines too long to support their weight, slunk from the darkness to snatch children from their beds, from the midst of their villages, from the river at their baths.  _

 

_ “The one who brought this was not kin to the people here. She spoke no tongue of theirs, she wore no garments similar to theirs, she carried weapons and charms that none had ever seen before, and it was only by the greatest of fortune that she knew a song that would allow them to understand her and she them. She was a hunter, she told them, and she had come seeking a monster that preyed upon those she was sworn to protect, crossing a vast distance of land and sea to do so, for she had given her word that the thing she pursued would perish with her arrows in its eyes and her sword in its heart.” The shadows danced: an armored woman, her helmet resting at her side, armed with sword and bow, sat seiza next to a fire, speaking with her hands to a gathering of many, their children held close. “The people told her of the naayéé that had come among them from nowhere, of the hope for the future they had slain and devoured, and she vowed to help them, as well -- for these things were mortal, and could perish as any other mortal thing, they needed only to find the ways to kill them.” _

 

_ She unbound the knots holding the pouch closed. The shadows danced: lesser naayéé perished beneath showers of arrows that flickered with heavenly fire, shot by hunting packs of warriors protected by songs and blessings and charms of painted paper, and the greater beast fled, a twisted and distorted amalgamation of wolf and serpent, howling its rage and hate at its pursuers. The warrior followed, the sky overhead boiling, clouds like the coils of a great storm-dragon wreathed in lightning, as she and the monster she had sworn to destroy clashed. _

 

_ “The Serpent-Wolf was defeated, the things like itself that it had made or brought with it were slain. When the hunters found the place where the warrior and the beast met in battle, they found the signs of a terrible struggle, blood dried and burnt, rocks shattered and sand scorched by the touch of something hotter than fire, hotter than even lightning. But they did not find its body, nor did they find hers. All that was left was this.” She held her hands out to him and in the cup of her palms lay a yanagi-ba, its edges still glistening sharp though stained black with the blood of a monster, the cut-in shape of two dragons intertwined on its broad face unmistakable for anything but what it was. “Neither you nor your brother were the first of your clan to come to this place, child. Like you, she came here for a reason, to keep the promises her family made, she and her mighty companion. And while you are not a dragon, I think that yours is the same.” _

 

_ “Yes.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew that they were true -- that they had always been true. “I...have always served them thus. I was born for this, to show my family the way, to bring them back to the mission for which our clan was founded.” His chest ached, hollow and cold. “Even my life is not worth more than that.” _

 

_ “Child.” The old woman who was not his grandmother closed her hand, gathered the arrowhead back into his wrappings. “Do not be so ready to throw away what you have just gained back.” _

 

_ “I have nothing else to give.” He closed his eyes and breathed and fought down the ache in his throat. “I...wish to see him, if I may.” _

 

_ “He sleeps, the better to strengthen you when you both wake.” Gently, and with a hint of reproof. _

 

_ “Then I will not disturb him. But I want --” He wanted many things, and not a single one of them mattered. “I would ask the gift of peace at his side, for at least as long as this dream lasts. May I have that?” _

 

_ “I will not deny you this.” She replaced the bundle in its niche and led him back into the maze of gently curving corridors, through a web of intersections, until they came to a place deeper inside her dwelling, where all the doors were covered in delicate weavings. She stopped before one, around which flickers of firelight shimmered, and caught his wrist before he could lift it aside. “Remember all of what I have said to you, child.” _

 

_ “I will, Grandmother. Thank you.” And, so saying, he lifted the hanging and stepped inside. _

 

_ It was a small chamber, round and only slightly larger than the room of niches. In its very center lay a pit, its fire burning low, curls of smoke drawn upward through the hole bored in the ceiling, through which was visible the sky, a dark arch of stars. On the far side from the door lay a simple pallet bed and on the bed lay the ranger, curled as though he had fought a fierce battle against his covers and lost, since most of them had escaped. Moving as softly as he was able, Hanzo crossed to his side, gathering up blankets as he went. _

 

_ The ranger lay with his broad back to the fire, naked from the waist up, his legs entangled in a mass of bedclothes, and Hanzo knelt next to him there, and drew the blankets he had gathered back over him, being careful not to disturb his rest. They were beautiful, those blankets, richly dyed and expertly woven, their patterns complex and beautiful, and he allowed his eyes to follow them as he breathed, let peace and cold alike flow through him, for he was chilled in a way that fire alone could not chase away. _

 

_ “I should have known,” He whispered, giving the words barely enough breath to allow them form, “that I would not be permitted a life of my own, separate from what I swore to serve, no matter how little they might want me.” He tasted the bitterness of it on his tongue and the cold ache in his chest sharpened and deepened. “I should have known that I would not be permitted to have…” _

 

_ The ranger made a low sound in his throat, a sound of pain, and beneath the blankets the line of his shoulders, the length of his spine, drew taut as a bowstring. His breath caught, and he tossed in his sleep, rolled onto his back, tossed away the blankets again. The firelight made his face a mask of anguish in sharp planes of shadow, his forehead beaded with sweat and the cords in his throat standing out sharply and, as Hanzo watched, uncertain what, if anything, to do, the markings he had twice before seen blossomed across the ranger’s skin. They etched themselves into place from the center of his chest outward, spreading down his arms in expanding, interlocking geometric forms, up his throat and over the curve of his shoulders, and another sound of pain escaped him, this one almost forming words, almost making a name. _

 

_ “I am here.” The words spilled from his lips before he could think of stopping them. “Jesse -- I am here, I am safe, you need not fear for me.”  _

 

_ He reached out and took the ranger’s hand in his own and it was then that he felt it, that he sensed it: cruelty and malice, savagery and bloodthirst, hatred and spite, wrath and wickedness, all of them far beyond anything human, and a hunger for human flesh and human blood that could never be sated, all of it bound by a will both ancient and strong. He thought, he knew, that he should pull his hand away but he could not make his arm move, pinned in place by the weight of shock and horror. He knew that he should pull his hand away and rise and run until he had no more strength to run with, but his limbs were as lead and his heart was screaming. He knew he should do something, anything, but even as he knew it, the grip on his hand tightened, warm, gentle, callused, the hands that had helped him to his feet, that had fed him when he was hungry and held him while he wept and saved his life in between, and the ranger’s eyes opened, gleaming crimson in the firelight, pupils drawn into a hair-fine slit. _

 

**_This is what Genji saw,_ ** _ a voice whispered in the back of his mind and, at the moment, he could not be certain it was reason or madness or both.  _

 

_ The sound that escaped the ranger’s lips, as he realized what he was seeing, was a small and breathless, “No.” It was not a denial. There was too much despair in it for that. _

 

_ “No?” Hanzo asked and before his grip could tighten again, he wrestled his hand back and pushed himself away, to his feet. _

 

_ “Hanzo, wait.  _ **_Please_ ** _ wait.” The ranger -- the thing that wore his ranger’s face -- his ranger, pushed himself up also, from his back to his elbows and from there to his knees. “Let me explain. Please,  _ **_please_ ** _ , let me --” He closed his eyes and, when he opened them, they were still bright, bloody crimson, banded in black. “It’s not what you think.” _

 

_ “You are one of them.” Hanzo rasped, and retreated another step closer to the door. “Naayéé.” _

 

_ He opened his mouth, and closed it again, and swallowed whatever lies he had been about to speak. “Hanzo -- please -- I --” _

 

_ He turned, and ran. It was far, far easier than he thought it would be to find his way through the twisting corridors and back to the ladder, back into the cold night air and to the shining path. He ran until his flesh ached as badly as his heart and his mind was empty of thought and exhaustion overtook him and he fell, first to his knees and then to his face and he lay in the cold and dark, wishing for emptiness, wishing for nothingness, and received it. _

_ * _

 

_ When Hanzo woke, he had no idea where he was. _

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for all the wonderful comments and support and, just to put everyone's minds at relative ease, no, Jack and Gabe did not birth demons. Or even Jesse.

The path beneath his feet was did not glitter, nor was it silver flecked with hints of shimmering color that rippled as he moved, as his steps carried him forward. In fact, it barely qualified as a path at all, two hand-spans of walked smooth sand and dirt and stone amid ankle-catching, winter dead ground cover, wending along the exposed brow of a hill scattered in stunted junipers and the occasional dead pinõn, trunk and branches bleached even whiter in the moonlight. Overhead, the nearly full moon shone cold and clear, companioned by a hundred million stars and a thin film of cloud dragged across his face by the wind, blowing hard and fiercely out of the north. That wind cut through his clothes without effort, scourged the warmth from his flesh with a whip made of oncoming winter, wrapped him in curtains of dust and grit that found their way down his throat and into his eyes, stuck to the tracks of moisture already streaking his face.

 

He had no idea where he was, and he found that he could not entirely bring himself to care. He was cold, colder than he could remember ever being before in his life, so cold he had to take the continued existence of his extremities as a matter of faith, so cold his chest ached and throbbed and burned with it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to care about that, either. His head spun with weariness and every part of him that wasn’t numb with cold ached with exhaustion, with exertion, as though he’d run until he could run no further and still couldn’t stop, his legs carrying him forward through no conscious wish or desire of his own. 

 

_ I was running away from something, _ the thought curled unbidden through his mind,  _ something I didn’t want to see _ , and then graciously, mercifully, his mind declined to show him what that was. And so he walked on and did not look back, knowing there was something behind him that he had fled rather than face.

 

The footprints he left in the sand were bloody.

 

He walked forever or perhaps for less, and came to a place where the path, such as it was, split: one branch continuing along the brow-ridge of the hills, the other curling down the slope between clumps of juniper and tussocks of dried grass hissing in the wind into the slender valley between two rises, the floor lost in the shadow of taller trees and the swirling gusts of passing dust devils. Something in that comforting patch of darkness beckoned to him, tugged at the cold filling his chest and the fatigue dulling his mind, called him to come to it, to step into its cool and lay down in its shade and finish freezing and he could think of no reason not to do so.

 

The path down was even narrower than the path above, canted at terrible angles, edged in sharp tumbled stone and razor-edged grass, and by the time he neared the bottom he had so little strength or coordination or balance left that, when his bloody feet skidded out from under him, he could do nothing but fall. He came to rest at the base of the rise, battered and bloodier than he had been even a moment before, not broken but too tired to do more than roll to his side and rest his face in the sand, let the wind comb through his hair and curl into his ears and whisper soundless exhortations to  _ get up get up it is not far now get up come to me. _

 

He opened his eyes and pushed himself up on arms that trembled with exhaustion, looked into the patch of moon-shadowed darkness before him, the boles of cottonwoods clustered around some small source of surface moisture.  _ A place to rest _ , a soft, nearly silent voice whispered within him, and he forced himself to his knees, and from there to his feet. A place to lay down among the tangled roots, in the cold and dark, and  _ sleep. _ He took an unsteady step forward.

 

Something caught him by the hand -- something warm and damp and full of sharp teeth, with which it was enormously gentle -- and stopped him from going any further.

 

Hanzo looked down into a pair of lambent green eyes, eyes attached to a long white muzzle, sharp-pointed ears, a sleek, long-backed, broad-shouldered body. Not a wolf but enough like one that it gave him pause, along with the fierce intelligence and gentle sorrow in those palely glowing eyes. Under the force of them, he let his knees fold back underneath him and sat still as it released his hand and nosed gently over him, finding every place that ached and throbbed and  _ hurt _ , licked the blood and dust and tears from his face. When it was done, it --  _ he _ , Hanzo thought -- sat back on his haunches, turned that long face to the sky, and howled, a gently rising ululation that echoed off the moonlit hills and carried and he came close and sat patiently to wait for an answer. His fur was almost impossibly warm when Hanzo rested his face in it, buried his hands in it, smelled of free flowing water and the first-budded leaves of spring, moss and loam and forested hills, and it was all he could do not to sob aloud as he felt the ice inside him beginning to crack.

 

The answering howl was closer -- far, far closer, and deeper, and colder, the sound of a savagely hungry creature on the hunt, with the scent of its prey on the wind and the wounded thing it pursued in sight. A low growl welled up in the chest of his companion and he came to his feet, hackles rising, and Hanzo threw his arms around that muscular neck, dug his fingers into his ruff to hold him back, even as the blood ran to ice in his veins. 

 

“You have to run,” Hanzo whispered desperately, those clever white ears flicking back in surprise as he spoke. “You have to  _ go _ . That thing -- it’s coming for  _ me _ , if you’re still here when it arrives it will kill you, you have to --”

 

The wind, already fierce, roared through the trees in the valley floor, snapping branches with a sound like shattering bones, driving a wall of sand and grit and dry fallen leaves before it that enveloped them completely. Hanzo’s eyes stung and watered and through the blur he saw it: the sickly bilious yellow-green radiance of its eyes, the warped and distorted coils of its too-long body, the contortions of its too-many legs, its muzzle-face a nightmare of sharp teeth and bifurcated tongues. The growl beneath his ear rose from a warning to a challenge.

 

The Serpent-Wolf threw back its obscenely misshapen head and  _ laughed _ .

 

It was the most terrible thing Hanzo ever heard, soul-flayingly contemptuous, and it took all his remaining strength to hold his companion back from launching himself at the thing, fangs bared. “No.  _ No, please. _ I don’t want you to be hurt.  _ Please. _ ”

 

_ Come to me, then, and I will let it be. _ Its words echoed, soundless, inside his skull, in his bones and blood and the deep places of his soul, foul and slithery and diseased.  _ Come to me and they shall all be safe. _

 

“Liar,” Hanzo said, from between clenched teeth, and turned his face enough to almost meet its gaze. 

 

_ Come. _ It crooned, pleading, nearly curling in on itself as the intensity of its desire, the enormity of its hunger rippled through its form.  _ I will harm nothing that does not keep you from me, beloved. I swear it. _

 

Hanzo’s stomach churned and he buried his face again in that impossibly soft and warm fur, felt the creature guarding him go still with something like horror.  _ Beloved. _ His body wanted to physically reject even the possibility, his mind was teetering on the edge of a completely therapeutic tumble into shrieking madness, and somewhere inside him, some soft and sick and horrible voice whispered:  _ Yes. _

 

_ Yes. This is why you came here. This is why you were called here. This and this alone: the only true bond, the only true bondmate, a thing like you could ever have. _

 

He knew it then, and the knowledge was a colder, darker knot inside him than even the scars Minamikaze had left him with. He spoke the words aloud because doing so made them feel more real. “You are...you were a  _ dragon. _ ”

 

_ YES. _ It felt, it tasted, like triumph, fierce with a tainted, twisted sort of joy.

 

Hanzo sobbed, tearless, and turned to face the thing that hunted him, the thing that had, once, been a dragon. “Swear it. Swear it on everything that you once were. You will not harm them. Not my brother. Not the ranger. Not my friends or his family.  _ Swear it. _ ”

 

_ You have my word. My word, upon everything that I once was and that we will be. _ Its eyes burned, ravenous, and Hanzo’s stomach twisted tighter.  _ Come to me. _

 

His companion growled again, the sound sliding into a pleading whine. Hanzo caught his ruff in both hands, pressed his forehead to that pale wolflike muzzle, and whispered, “Go. Go to the others.  _ Hurry. _ ”

 

A rough, wet tongue pressed a kiss to his forehead and his companion pulled back, but did not flee, lips peeled back, teeth bared. Hanzo braced his fists on his thighs and gathered his strength, worked his aching feet back beneath him, forced himself to rise. The Serpent-Wolf coiled in the shadow of the trees, twisting itself into maddening knots in its agitation, and in them he could now see the mangy, scabrous remnants of once-sapphire scales, the pathetic tatters of a once-golden mane. Its pallid eyes were hot with desire, a low, spine-curlingly hideous crooning dripping out of its maw along with far too many tentacular black tongues, and Hanzo wondered, as he limped toward it, why it came no further, made no attempt to close the distance itself.

 

He was less than a half-dozen paces away, close enough to nearly taste the sickening miasma that rose from its corrupted essence, when he heard someone scream his name.

 

_ Don’t turn around, _ that soft and sick and horrible voice whispered in the back of his mind and it froze him before he could move, before he could look, hand half-raised to reach for the twisted thing that had waited centuries for his coming.  _ Don’t look back. There is nothing for you there. _

 

_ Beloved, _ the Serpent-Wolf’s voice curled inside him, intimate, defiling,  _ please. _

 

He stepped back, once, twice, and the thing coiled before him  _ shrieked _ in rage and hurled itself at him, twisted foreclaws spread wide, and he braced himself for the impact, for something horrible beyond human comprehension to pour itself into his flesh, whether he willed it or not.

 

The impact, as it happened, came from a completely different direction -- the side -- and it involved all the air being driven out of his lungs by the force of it, even as someone wrapped their arms around his head and back to protect them when they hit the rocky ground together, a significant distance away. Light flared, warm and bright and  _ pure _ , and he felt it wash through him like a cleansing wave, chasing away the cold and dark and the longing for both. He opened his eyes -- when had he closed them? -- and found Zenyatta kneeling defensively over him, a trio of golden spheres orbiting them, the radiance enveloping them so dense it seemed nearly solid. One long-fingered hand still cradled his head and another rested in the center of his chest; his eyes glowed from within, a hot golden-white, matching the brilliant filaments etching themselves into place over his dark skin. When he spoke, his voice was resonant in a way it had never been before. “Be still, my friend. You are injured and this thing has worked its influence upon your mind and soul.”

 

The Serpent-Wolf laughed again, the sound no less excoriating for repetition, and lunged at them, its coils lashing, foreclaws raking down to strike and recoiling in a burst of hard golden light. It twisted back on itself, rising impossibly high on the gnarled column of its spine, foreclaws chipped and smoking, and came back down again, jaws agape. Its fangs grated against against that sphere of golden light as though it were a solid thing, stronger than steel, almost brighter than the sun, and Zenyatta lifted his hand away from Hanzo’s chest, called a fourth orb into existence to bolster it. Fangs as long as a large man’s hand lodged in it, tearing gouges, sending cracks spreading across the surface. An involuntary sound of pain escaped Zenyatta’s throat as one of his orbs shivered and cracked, as well, and Hanzo croaked, “Zen, no --  _ stop _ \-- you can’t --”

 

“I can.” Serenely and a fifth orb flickered into existence. “This thing  _ will not _ have you will it is in my power to prevent it.”

 

_ Prevent it? _ The Serpent-Wolf’s voice was caustically silken.  _ For the amusement that gives me, I will eat you last, little halfthing. _

 

Its jaws flexed, snapped shut, and the shield shattered with a force that slammed them both into the ground with stunning power. Hanzo took the chance to shove Zenyatta away with all the strength he could muster, away from the serrated jaws and carrion-eater breath and horrifically prehensile tongues hovering inches from his face, the coils and talons pinning him to the dust.

“You promised me their lives,” Hanzo rasped, glaring up into eyes the size of his head, and tried not to gag as the stench of its laughter gusted over him.

 

_I lied._ The tip of a tongue, cold and slick, slid across his cheek. _Do you know what he saw, when he looked into your soul? When he looked upon all that you were and would be?_ _He saw US. You are mine. You have always been mine. Even he could not keep you from me and neither shall these --_

 

It reared back with a shriek of agony, pulling itself fully off the ground and jerking Genji, sword planted deep in its armor-plated side, along with it. The whipcrack of its spine dislodged both the blade and his brother, sent both flying, Genji hitting the ground in a roll that brought him back to his feet, the blade skittering away among the rocks. It wheeled on him and howled its pain and hate, jaws wide enough to swallow him in a bite, and his stupidly brave beloved idiot of a brother held his ground, his own teeth bared, and roared back with a dragon’s voice, the air shimmering green and gold around him.

 

“ _ Genji!” _ Hanzo and Zenyatta howled, almost with one voice.

 

Between one moment and the next, the wind died, the air stilling completely in that little valley even as it continued to howl along the heights, dragged more shreds of cloud across the face of the moon. The cold sharpened and deepened, driving knives of frost into his lungs, and the light shone bloody in the hollow between the hill and the cottonwood trees, overcoming even the heavenly brilliance of Genji’s companion, overwhelming the Serpent-Wolf’s bilious and repellent effusions with contemptuous ease, knife-edged talons of shadow racing across the earth to leap at it, even as it fled, hurling itself into the sky. The shadows pursued, forcing it higher, and for an instant its hideous form was silhouetted against the moon, the shadows dissipating in its cool light, and it hung there, glaring hatred at all of them.

 

_ I will have you. _ Its voice slid into all of their minds, poisonous and malevolent.  _ And when I do, the first thing we will feel will be his blood on our claws and the first thing we will taste will be his heart between our teeth. _

 

Dust and cloud enveloped it, washed over them, and when the sky cleared again it was gone.

 

“Hanzo,” Zenyatta’s hands came to rest on his shoulders as he struggled to his knees, held him in place as Genji joined them, his brother’s arms closing around him. “Please, do not move more than you have to -- you are injured.”

 

His body took that opportunity to make its categorical refusal to do more than fold up against Genji’s chest and shake like a leaf known, too cold and exhausted and  _ hurt _ to even pretend to want to run. He did not, however, look up, resting his face in the crook of his brother’s neck.

 

“Gabe’s on the way with the Jeep.” The ranger’s voice was clipped, professionally neutral, utterly and unnaturally devoid of expression. Something warm with body heat, scented with cedar and sage and spice came to rest on his shoulders, and he shook harder at the touch of it. “Five minutes at most. Just...rest until then. We’ll sort this back at the house.”

 

* 

 

Genji and Zenyatta carried him, exhausted and drifting in and out of awareness, into the hacienda, his arms over their shoulders, neither of them allowing his feet to touch the ground. He was glad of that, once they sat him down in one of the chairs in the great room, and began the process of assessing his injuries which involved peeling what was left of the socks he’d been wearing off his feet, a process that drove him to complete thrashing awareness of the world and how much everything hurt and almost resulted in Zen being kicked involuntarily in the head.

 

“Easy easy easy,” Genji caught both his hands. “Squeeze if you --  _ wow _ , you  _ haven’t _ been neglecting gym day, have you? It’s okay,  _ aniki _ , you’re here, we’ve got you, you’re --” He stopped, swallowed what he’d been about to say, finished with, “here. What  _ happened? _ ”

 

That last was directed over his shoulder at the ranger, who was kneeling next to the fireplace, coaxing it to life thin sticks of tinder and long matches. “Not sure.”

 

“And  _ I’m _ pretty sure that’s not an acceptable answer.” Genji snapped, bristling. “This place was supposed to be  _ safe. _ ”

 

“And it  _ is _ safe, kid.” Hot Vampire Dad’s gravelly voice, pitched low and soothing rather than defensive, and Genji responded to it instinctively like he would have their father’s, some of the tension leaching out of his shoulders. “But not if you don’t stay  _ inside _ it.” He came around the end of the sofa with the huge white and -- green? Yes, that dog was pretty emphatically and unmistakably green, everywhere it wasn’t white, pale yellow flowers and spring leaves drifting in its wake, and Hanzo decided that was infinitely preferable to prehensile fucking tongues -- animal pacing alongside him, cane in one hand and a tablet in the other. For the first time, he noticed the implants lying flush with the pale skin of his temples, possibly because their LEDs were lit for the first time, as vividly blue as his eyes. “The security system seems to think he went out the postern gate that the pack uses when it’s on patrol, about half-past midnight.”

 

“Almost four hours.” Genji’s voice was tight. “Hanzo --”

 

“I could use more light,” Zenyatta interjected quietly and he was pathetically grateful for it, glad that the moment where he would have to think and speak and try to explain was being pushed off a little longer. “And also some warm water and first aid supplies.”

 

“I’ll get that.” The fire was burning cheerfully now, the warmth reaching out to enfold them all, the ranger almost seeming to flee it and the lights as his father brought them up. 

 

Zenyatta hissed softly at what he saw and the dog -- was it a dog? Those eyes held a wisdom and intelligence that suggested otherwise, no matter what its form said -- paced over to them, claws clicking softly on the floor, and laid its wolflike head in his lap. He worked one of his hands free and stroked those sharp, clever ears, buried his fingers in the fur, and felt peace soak into him through the contact, peace and distance, so that even the myriad pains of his body and the aching in his chest seemed comfortably far away. He heard the others talking, was vaguely aware of it when the Smoke Monster came inside and joined the conversation, felt his brother stroking the hair back from his face and his feet going into a basin of water just on the pleasant side of warm, felt them being patted dry and the gentle application of something smooth and tingly and then wrapped in biotic-impregnated bandages. The dog lifted his face and kissed him gently on the forehead, went to lie at his master’s feet and the world slowly came back to him.

 

Zenyatta moved the basin aside and propped his legs up on a footrest and he became aware, compared to how clean and comfortable they were, precisely how grungy the rest of him was, covered in dust and grime and quite probably carrying a not insubstantial portion of the desert in his underwear. Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad had taken a seat next to his husband and was regarding him steadily with three pairs of glowing crimson eyes and Hanzo had the distinct feeling that the defilement of the otherwise immaculately clean living room by his filthy person would be a crime punishable by something deeply unpleasant under other circumstances. By way of contrast, Hot Vampire Dad visibly didn’t care, a little frown permanently encamped on the corners of his mouth as he glared at the tablet and its contents. Genji let go of his hand only long enough to fetch a chair for himself and a throw pillow for Zen, who stayed where he was on the floor in half-lotus with his back to the fire, unapologetically luxuriating in the warmth. Hanzo flicked a glance around the room but the ranger remained stubbornly nowhere to be seen.

 

“So,” Hot Vampire Dad, whom he really ought to be getting used to calling Jack, broke the silence, “what happened?”

 

“I’m...not sure.” It wasn’t entirely a lie and his voice, when he spoke, sounded as dusty as his clothes, his throat close kin to the desert hardpack. “Could I have something to drink?”

 

Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad, whom he should really start thinking of as Gabe, rose and fetched it -- a pitcher of the citrus salt-lick beverage the ranger seemed to favor after long midnight walks in the desert and a tall glass from which to consume it, and he took down three glasses before his tongue felt as though it were reconstituted enough to allow for speech. 

 

“How, exactly, can  _ neither _ of you be sure what happened -- I thought the  _ whole point _ of this was that you’d share dreamspace and --” Genji began and stumbled to a halt when Hanzo squeezed his hand.

 

“I remember Mrs. Amari bringing us our medicine -- it took effect very quickly.” That, at least, was completely true. “I dreamt I was walking through a deep canyon in the desert and I came to a little house under the ground, and there was an old woman, who looked like Grandmother Sumiko? Genji, do you remember that gorgeous old kimono she wore to the maple-viewing party --”

 

“Hanzo,” Genji replied, not unkindly, “ _ focus. _ ”

 

“....Right.” He poured himself another glass for the sake of stealing a few more moments to organize his thoughts. “She told me she was the one who repaired the broken threads of my soul after the Serpent-Wolf attacked me.”

 

Terrifying Smoke Monster Gabe and Hot Vampire Jack exchanged a glance and for the first time, Hanzo saw Jack’s eyes actually, visibly focus.

 

“She showed herself to you.” It wasn’t quite a question, Gabe’s tone was too neutral for that, a few more pairs of eyes suddenly opening as he said it.

 

“Yes. We spoke -- she wanted to see my arm. She...untied the last bits of the unmade bond, because it was still tainted, she said.” He flexed his still-bandaged left hand, as dusty as the rest of him, but felt nothing different. “She...told me...showed me...things about the Serpent-Wolf. About how it came here from somewhere else, hundreds of years after nearly all the other  _ naayéé _ were slain. How it...how it made others like itself and how they hunted children.”

 

Genji’s grip tightened on his hand, and Zenyatta’s hand came to rest on his knee, a sphere curling into existence at his shoulder and pouring  _ peace calm not you never you _ through him and it was all he could do not to melt into it, let the weariness gnawing at his mind pull him down. “Genji -- you and I aren’t the first of the clan to come here. The Serpent-Wolf...it may have come here from  _ home _ . A warrior of the clan and her dragon pursued it here and fought with it, may have injured it badly enough that it lay dormant...waiting for something to come to…” His stomach churned and he had to clench his teeth against it. “To wake it again. To give it what it needs to be whole. It was -- it used to be -- a dragon itself. That’s why it wants me. It’s -- I’m its --”

 

“ _ No. _ ” In four-part harmony and they all sort of sat for an instant afterwards staring in surprise at one another while Hanzo shook and tried not to laugh too insanely.

 

“You can believe  _ nothing _ that thing said to you, Hanzo -- it would have said anything, done anything to convince you to make yourself vulnerable to it.” Zenyatta said, flatly. “It has  _ lost _ its easy entry point to your flesh and your soul, you are surrounded now by people who can defend you until you are capable of defending yourself, it will do anything it can to strip you of those advantages.” 

 

“I don’t suppose there’s much of a chance that I mortally wounded it?” Genji asked, almost plaintively.

 

“Not likely.” Gabe replied, most of his extra sets of eyes closed and the ones that were still open regarding everything in front of them thoughtfully. “Persistent fuckers like this thing rarely go down that easy, even if they’re not what they used to be.”

 

“I cannot imagine how terrible this...entity once was if this is what it is capable of at a point of  _ weakness. _ ” Zenyatta murmured, and flicked a glance at Genji.

 

“If it was truly a dragon once, wouldn’t some record of it exist in the family histories? The genealogy? Or something about the warrior that came here to fight it?” Genji asked, delicately. “You said he was --”

 

“She. The warrior was a woman. And, yes, she was a dragon-bearer herself. Before it came here, it was preying on those she swore to protect -- it fled and she followed, across the ocean, across the desert.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember the exact words, the way the shadows had played across the stone walls of the old woman’s house. “They killed the lesser things that it had made -- they weren’t vulnerable to the native magics of this place and its people, it needed a mixture of their magic and hers to slay them. She fought the Serpent-Wolf alone and they found no bodies afterwards, not its body nor hers, just a place in the desert scorched from the intensity of their battle and one of her arrows. An arrow with the Shimada crest cut into it. So...yes. Whoever she was, she has to be in the family history somewhere, and finding her may tell us...something, because this? All of this? Started back home.”

 

“What’ll you need to accomplish that?” Jack asked, his attention again on the tablet, eyes unfocused and Hanzo could not help wondering how the Hell that even worked.

 

“A connection and a console. The last time I checked, the clan hadn’t opted to lock me out of the genealogical databases.” He smiled wryly. “I suppose they consider that sort of access reasonably harmless.”

 

“Let me sing the song of how much I want to slap half our family.” Genji growled.

 

“Only half?” Hanzo asked. “Who fell off your shit list?”

 

“The only thing I’d like to know,” Jack interjected, meditatively, “is why you left the house. And how.”

 

It wasn’t a question and yet the words leapt to Hanzo’s tongue unbidden.  _ Because I’m an idiot. Because I saw something I wasn’t ready to see and, instead of trying to understand it, instead of letting him explain it to me, I freaked out and ran and somehow, somehow, that thing knew and used it to hurt me, used it to draw me out of the place where it couldn’t get at me. And, even though I ran away from him, he still came to help me again, because that is who he truly is and what he truly does and that’s what Grandmother Spider was trying to tell me, why she tried to warn me. Because she knew. Because she’s seen this before. And now he’s somewhere in this house waiting for me to turn on him and tell my brother and my friends that he’s a monster, and how many fucking times has that happened to him? How many people has he tried to care about only to have them not be able to deal when he tells them the truth? Because I have a pretty strong feeling this isn’t a first? _

 

That wasn’t really the sort of question you could ask a man’s father, and so he swallowed it, and scrubbed his hands wearily over his eyes to hide the tears, and lied with great sincerity. “I’m not entirely sure. The dream changed, and I was running -- running through the desert and when I woke up, I was outside and walking...Where was I?”

 

“The old Cerrillos Hills State Park, just northeast of here.” Jack replied and looked up, his gaze sharpening again. “You’re lucky you didn’t fall into a mineshaft -- the whole place is riddled with them and the penumbra of the border wards pretty much won’t help prevent that.”

 

“That’s why it was trying to draw me out there? Past the effect of the wards?” Hanzo asked.

 

“You were almost beyond the outermost fringe so I’m going to say...yeah. Pretty sure that was the motive. You’re lucky Jesse woke up when he did and realized you were gone -- you somehow managed to walk past the dogs without drawing their attention. And even luckier that Binky caught your scent.” Jack frowned at him over the top of the tablet, clearly resisting a few more questions.

 

“You...named that magnificent creature  _ Binky. _ ” Hanzo was reaching the point where exerting the effort necessary to craft a proper interrogative was definitely not worth it.

 

“It fit him as a puppy.” From the floor, Binky rolled his eyes expressively.

 

“You should have suspended his naming privileges  _ way _ before Chad.” Hanzo informed Terrifying Smoke Gabe.

 

“Yeah, I should have, but I’m fatally weak to his -- ow, hey. I was looking out that.” Gabe swatted his husband’s hand away. “You look like shit. Go get washed up and we’ll talk more about all this in the...later morning. Maybe in the afternoon.”

 

Genji and Zen helped him up and into their guest suite bathroom, got him out of his filthy nightclothes, applied enough soap and water to make him feel marginally human again, and fetched him a fresh tee-shirt and pair of pants. His contribution to the process was letting them without putting up much of an argument.

 

“I can’t take your bed.” That, on the other hand, he felt he should object to in at least a  _ pro forma _ way and did so, even as Zen pulled back the covers and Genji scooped him off his feet and into the middle of the mattress.

 

“You’re not  _ taking _ it, you’re  _ sharing _ it.” Genji settled himself down on the sliver of bed to his right and Zen, having locked the bedroom door and the louvered doors that opened onto the inner courtyard, took the spot on the left. “Go to sleep. I’ll stand first watch?”

 

“If that pleases you, my heart.” Zen replied, resting a hand on his forehead and, before he could formulate a properly big brotherish response to that, sleep descended upon his body and mind and dragged him down to rest.

 

*  

 

Hanzo’s sleep was blessedly dreamless, fathomlessly deep, and didn’t so much end as fade away in fits and starts. At one point, he woke enough to find his cheek resting against the unruly mop of his brother’s offensively green hair, Genji’s head slowly extracting all the feeling from his arm, the rest half-wrapped around him in a manner strongly reminiscent of his brother’s eight year old self, fleeing thunderstorms and weird noises and “it’s too cold/hot/dark/bright can I stay with you,  _ aniki, _ ” the times they had spent sleeping in a tent made of sheets and all the moveable furniture in his room and stuffed animals and handheld game consoles. A gently guiding nudge restored circulation and Hanzo was asleep again before the pins and needles completely subsided. At another, his consciousness bobbed to the surface long enough to register Genji’s absence, a warm golden glow a few inches from his face, Zenyatta’s long body sitting propped against the headboard next to him, reading on his tablet. Zen glanced down, saw that he was awake, and asked a question, but weariness drew him down before he could comprehend the words. 

 

He finally woke up for good sometime after the sun was high enough to reach over the hacienda walls and into the inner courtyard. At some point, the louvered doors had been unlocked and pushed partially open, a breath of pleasantly cool air making its way into the room, gently scented with woodsmoke, music drifting on it from a source he couldn’t see. Neither Genji nor Zen were immediately apparent, though he suspected they were close, probably just outside on the verandah, and so he moved as stealthily as possible in order to avoid disturbing them, for values of stealthy that involved hobbling like an octogenarian in need of a double hip replacement while swearing fluently in three languages as his muscles made their disapproval of this course of action known. As far as he was concerned, his muscles, joints, and any other intransigent body parts could suck it because he needed a bath more than his next breath and then he needed all the caffeine in the world and then he needed his ranger, because he felt quite strongly that he had some groveling to do.

 

Fortunately, his faulty brain did not betray him and the in-suite bathroom did, in fact, contain a bathtub. In fact, it contained an antique claw-foot bathtub deep enough to cover him to the shoulders and long enough to hold his entire body, knees unbent, painted around the edges in a ring of bright yellow and red flowers. He undressed like the aforementioned octogenarian joint-replacement candidate, discovering bruises in places he hadn’t thought were capable of bruising and he’d been educated in matters of hand to hand and armed combat by a series of instructors who considered hematomas to be the price of success in the practice ring, more than a few scrapes that would probably need more extensive tending, and an astonishing amount of sand still lurking in places where nobody ever wanted to find sand. At all. Ever. He unwrapped his feet and found that whatever first aid Zen had applied worked miracles, finding his soles pink and tender but not sliced to ribbons he didn’t dare walk on.

 

And that left the arm.

 

No trauma shears in the medicine cabinet, but he hadn’t really expected to find any, and he instead settled for a pair of trimming scissors that he applied slowly and carefully, having some idea what he would find already thanks to the state of his shoulder and his left pectoral. The wrappings fell away in strips, revealing unmarked skin, unblemished as a newborn, as he went, not even the hint of a scar to mark the place where the Serpent-Wolf’s eye had opened in his flesh, his fingers untwisted and strong. No scars, no striated remnants, no tattoo -- which had, after all, been the physical representation of the bond, and could no more be left behind than the bond itself.

 

It hurt, but less than he expected, forewarned as he was by what had passed in dreams. He wondered what Genji would think of it when he saw. 

 

He did not, however, wonder for very long because he itched, intensely and horribly, and the desire to be clean easily overcame the desire to sit and brood and, as a rule, he preferred not to brood in the bath. Under any ordinary circumstance, in fact, he never would have desecrated such a beautiful bathtub, clearly intended to be used for hour-long soaks of pure relaxation -- with or without oils, salts, incense, or candles -- with his cruddily unwashed person but these were desperate and fallen times. Even so, he soaked for twenty minutes and scrubbed thoroughly for another fifteen, and by the time he climbed back out his scrapes were stinging but at least his muscles were coming back around. The towels were exquisitely thick and fluffy and there were enough randomly occurring combs and brushes and grooming products stashed in the cabinets that he didn’t have to use the ones his brother had obviously claimed by virtue of their tangles of acid-green hair. His own was going to need to be buzzed again soon, the fuzz growing out enough that its silvery sheen was obvious to the naked eye, threads of silver visibly beginning to work their way through his otherwise ink-black hair. 

 

“Hanzo?” Zen’s quiet voice, on the other side of the bathroom door. “I brought your bag down and brunch is still laid out on the verandah.”

 

“Thank you!” Hanzo waited five minutes, poked his head out, and found the room empty and the overnight bag sitting on the end of the bed.

 

He shoved the brown paper sack to the bottom of the bag and fished out a package of underwear, a package of socks, a pair of jeans and a henley, all of which were a size too large, a circumstance distinctly preferable to a size too small, and heavy red-and-black checked flannel shirt to go over it all. His shoes sat next to the screen door leading out to the verandah, where Lucio sat with his hard light composition rig, clearly on guard duty, next to a trestle table laid with baked goods, fruit from one of the greenhouses, two chafing dishes, one of which contained bacon, the other the remains of fruit-and-cheese stuffed French toast, one carafe of coffee and a second of tea so strong and black it might as well be coffee. 

 

“We’re going to have to have some kind of gigantic multicultural dinner party banquet to repay these people for all the food we’re eating.” Hanzo deposited his acquisitions on the table where Lucio waited and set to as though his stomach were trying to digest his spine, which it was.

 

“Maybe they’ll let us borrow their kitchen? And maybe the whole house because I personally doubt our ability to fit everybody in the condo without knocking out a few walls.” Lucio looked up from the composition he was working on. “How d’you feel?”

 

“This is another of those better than I did situations.” He sipped his tea and closed his eyes in bliss. “Have I apologized recently for dragging you into this?”

 

“Not since yesterday.” A grin curled the corner of his mouth. “Between you and me, I’m kinda glad I slept through this one. From what Zen told us, it sounds like it was pretty gnarly.”

 

“Gnarly is a perfectly excellent word that doesn’t get anywhere near the use it deserves and which perfectly encapsulates exactly how fucked everything was last night.” Hanzo agreed, and returned to the chafing dishes for more bacon. “Have you seen him recently? Or my brother?”

 

“Mrs. Amari collected Zen a couple minutes ago -- she wanted to consult with him about something.” Lucio reached over and snatched a piece of bacon. “Genji went out earlier with the ranger and that big green dog to take a look at the spot where everything went down last night, see if any of ‘em could pick up a trail that might lead us back to where the Serpent-Thingee’s hiding out when it isn’t -- Han? Are you okay?”

 

“Fine. I’m fine.” Hanzo took a sip of his tea and sternly ordered himself to calm all the way back down because  _ Genji was coming around _ and there was  _ absolutely no way _ one of Hot Vampire Jack’s dogs would let his brother kill Hot Vampire Jack’s son and stuff his body in an abandoned mineshaft. That was ridiculous beyond contemplation. Absolutely impossible. Not even worth thinking about.

 

His bookbag landed in the chair next to him and, while he was distracted by its unexpected advent, his brother ninja’d the rest of his bacon. “How’s it going?”

 

_ Score one for rationality _ , the obnoxiously smug voice of reason murmured in the back of his mind, and he just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes at it as he turned to face Genji, shamelessly devouring his ill-gotten spoils. “I could ask the same of you. Did you find anything useful?”

 

“We’re going to need to bribe someone to tell us where they get their bacon, that’s for sure.” He made a point of licking each finger clean individually. “But for the record: Tombo’s spirit-cutting sword wounded it. It left globs of ectoplasmic residue all over the place. Unfortunately, that was all it left. Tombo couldn’t get a read on it and neither could Binky, and I’m told he’s the best scent-hound in the pack. But, as far as concepts go, I’m inclined to embrace  _ if it bleeds, we can kill it _ and the ranger agrees, at least provisionally.”

 

“We just have to get it into a position where stabbing it more than once is an option.” Hanzo remarked, dryly, and fished his phone out -- dead -- and his tablet out -- also, dead -- and his shot composition camera -- almost dead -- and then the recharging cables for all of them. Lucio pushed a power hub across the table to him and he smiled his thanks.

 

“Baby steps.” Genji rose and fetched back more brunch for both of them. “So...how’s you?”

 

“I’ve been awake less than an hour but, in that time, I’ve had no more voices than usual in my head and nothing has tried to eat me, which I’m calling an unqualified win.” He indulged himself in grease and salt and perfect crispiness, while Genji and Lucio exchanged a series of increasingly conspiratorial glances. “And, for the record, no, we didn’t have an opportunity to make use of any of your thoughtful gifts before everything went pear-shaped and, even if it hadn’t,  _ I wouldn’t tell any of you reprobates about it. _ ”

 

“You are  _ such _ a prude.” Genji shook his head mournfully. “ _ How _ many times did you walk in on Kazue and I making out in the dojo?”

 

“Fourteen too many,” Hanzo growled. “Where is he now?”

 

“The ranger? The last I saw he was going to talk to his dads about what we found and what we didn’t find and get the brain trust working on next moves because, well, we’re going to have to go back to school eventually.” They all three glanced at Hanzo’s phone, none of them strangers to the eccentricities of his thesis advisor. 

 

Hanzo finished his plate, gathered up Genji and Lucio’s, as well, and announced, “I’ll be back in a bit.”

 

The kitchen was empty, and he deposited the dishes in the sink for later washing. The great room was also empty, the fire banked low but not entirely out, three intensely black dogs piled in front of it in an eye-disturbingly impossible tangle: Chad, Dog, and a previously unintroduced member of the pack, whippet-thin with a head that had more in common with a pit viper than a canine and three more sets of eyes than were technically available to either species. He tiptoed past them into the non-residential wing, where he’d been told the family kept their offices, and nearly walked directly into Hot Vampire Jack as he came around the corner. 

 

Hot Vampire Jack stepped back just in time to avoid a collision. “Hanzo. I was just about to come looking for you.”

 

“Oh?” Hanzo asked, attempting casual and not quite getting there.

 

“I’ve got a secure connection and an unlocked console set up for you in my office -- just down the hall, second door on the right.” Those unseeing eyes unerringly locked on his own. “Whenever you’re ready. Just close the door when you’re done and the security system will lock it down.”

 

“Thank you. I appreciate that greatly.” He hesitated fractionally. “Do you know where Ranger McCree might be? My brother told me he was coming to speak with you.”

 

“He and Gabe stepped out to check the integrity of the perimeter defences.” Hot Vampire Jack blinked and Hanzo found himself able to look away. “That thing got to you somehow, even with the hardening work Reinhardt did yesterday, and if we want to keep it from happening again, finding the point of failure’s sort of a priority.”

 

“I agree entirely. Thank you, again, for all your help.” And, left with no other option, Hanzo fled to the office -- elegant, minimalist, no floor clutter that might constitute a transit hazard, walls painted a vivid shade of turquoise -- where the computer and actually being able to do something useful waited.

 

Which, he supposed, was significantly better than anything else he might be doing just now. As he suspected, his access to the clan’s private server network was truncated but not entirely revoked -- he could access the general use library, the historical archives, and the genealogical records, but nothing else. The librarian AI, in fact, greeted him an excess of enthusiasm as he logged in. “Young master! It is good to see you again.”

 

“Greetings, Toshokan-in-dono. It’s good to see you again, too.” It was: the AI had a motherly voice and had constructed a motherly face to go with it, all gentle smiles and shrewd dark eyes. “I need to query the genealogical database and the historical archives on a matter of some importance.”

 

“Oh? Do tell.” He could practically picture her settling down with a cup of tea and the avaricious glint of a thwarted gossip in her eye. 

 

“I need to find someone who disappeared without a trace between the years of 1573 and 1868.” The  _ yanagi-ba _ , the broad, willow leaf shaped arrowheads used primarily for hunting large game, had come into use and remained popular across that span of time, a fact he knew from his own practice as an archer -- he owned more than a few of the lightweight ceramic versions currently in favor with game hunters and target shooters alike. “A woman of the clan, a dragon-bearer in specific, but also anyone else who may have disappeared in that same period. And any records that pertain to the dragon-bearers of that time.”

 

“That can be done -- but it may take some time to run all the queries.” A certain wry discontent came into her tone. “System Administration is performing server maintenance and standard security updates so...three hours, perhaps four, to compile everything you may need?”

 

“That would be excellent. If you could download the results to my tablet, that would be even better.” He checked the time -- it was fourish in the morning in Japan, probably the only time when the clan’s sysadmin could perform maintenance without inconveniencing someone far more likely to make them permanently miserable, and he found he couldn’t really complain too much about a delay.

 

“That is entirely possible. May I assist you with anything else?”

 

“Not at the moment, thank you.” He was entirely capable of accessing the general library, which was helpfully online at least, and downloaded five historical monographs and two treatises on esoteric aspects of magic and religion that might prove helpful and three novels that wouldn’t be helpful at all but which he wanted to re-read, because reading was objectively better than brooding and he was fighting off a brood with all his might.

 

He made certain the door was firmly closed behind him and the security system engaged, then went forth in search of his ranger again. The great room was still empty but now there was at least one more dog, as well: Binky, looming mountainously above all the others even at rest, who put his head up and  _ looked _ at him with those wise and kindly eyes as he approached. Hanzo knelt and provided scritches upon request, stroked his hands along that long back and inhaled the perfume that rose from the contact. 

 

“Binky-sama,” He finally said, the name sounding somewhat less foolish with an honorific appended, at least to his own ears, “will you help me find him? Jesse?”

 

Binky regarded him steadily for a moment, then nosed him gently in the center of the forehead and rose, clearly intending for him to follow. And follow he did, though first he scurried into the courtyard, grabbed his phone, camera, and bag, texting as he went:  _ Need to stretch my legs. Taking Binky for a walk. BBS. _

 

Just on the other side of the entry gate, Binky lifted his face to the wind, his eyes half-lidded with concentration, and inhaled deeply, while Hanzo muted his phone and shoved it into the bottom of his bag under the sedimentary layer of plastic sandwich baggies holding watercolor sponges in advanced states of disintegration, crumbling half-used ink sticks, the sad remnants of a half-dozen pastels, and something that might have once been sealing wax and/or a packet of cinnabar ink paste. In such a way could at least legitimately argue that he hadn’t heard any of the frantic vibratory buzzing already emanating from it as he and Binky headed off, Binky moving in a manner entirely too elegant to be described as a trot and Hanzo stretching his legs most definitely to keep up. 

 

The area around the hacienda had, before the Crisis, obviously been primarily residential neighborhood, and that of relatively recent vintage: most of the architecture was also some species of Pueblo Revival surrounded in grounds carefully landscaped and planted with drought-resistant native species, window shutters and garden gates painted now-faded shades of turquoise or red, devoid of the obvious signs of intrusion or vandalism that a well-known abandoned town might suffer. Someone had obviously not permitted the plants to run wild in the unpeopled gardens or the windows to be broken or the roofs to cave in under severe weather. Deeper into town, the older and more fundamentally ramshackle the structures became, many of them a century or more old even before the complete evacuation of the town’s remaining residents and its subsequent transformation into a national monument and bastion against horrors from beyond the world. On the other hand, most of those structures also showed signs of conservation efforts, which he had noticed before, and also plinths mounted with hologenerators that lovingly narrated the history of the town in Ranger McCree’s voice and displayed a selection of photographs and short bits of film from multiple time periods when prompted to do so. Binky appeared perfectly willing to let him stop and examine them, and to take pictures of the town and its environs, spread out beneath the flawlessly autumn blue sky as the sun dipped away from its zenith and dropped toward the far western mountains. Even in the town, there was a wild, lonely beauty to it and his fingers itched to capture it in ink and watercolor, even as they continued on their mission.

 

Binky led him, as the sun was definitely taking on a reddish late afternoon tinge, to dirt-paved road labeled First Street and from there to the gates of a church -- an old-style adobe mission church with a high, faded green dome topped in a slightly battered cross, its identity deeply incised in an arch above the heavy wooden doors that comprised the main entrance: Iglesia San Jose, followed by the numeral 22. To the right lay a walled-in courtyard, one enormous cottonwood just outside the wall, a second just inside, both still clad in brilliant autumn gold, the faded remains of a mural barely visible between them on the wall itself. Binky led him to the gate set in the courtyard wall rather than to the doors of the main sanctuary itself, or the smaller, blockier building adjoining. 

 

The gate was arched, its wood visibly weathered with age, as was the sign bolted to the adobe above it:  _ Shrine of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces. _ It also stood slightly ajar. Hanzo moved it even more slightly ajar -- it swung on recently oiled or replaced hinges -- and stepped inside. He paused for a moment, but Binky showed no inclination to join him, settling instead on the sidewalk outside and laying his head on his forelegs.

 

The shrine itself was a simple thing -- a stone statue, painted details faded and weathered, covered in a wooden arch densely wrapped what were likely flowering vines, ringed in marble benches slowly crumbling under the assault of the elements. Golden cottonwood leaves covered the courtyard to ankle depth in places, its stones arranged in medallions of religious iconography up both sides with a pathway between them. Tiny niches were sculpted into the walls at intervals, some containing ceramic pots for flowers, others obviously intended for votive offerings from the ancient layers of wax still lingering, still others smaller pieces of wooden and stone statuary. In the very back, behind the shrine itself, a tiered set of platforms led up to what had probably once been a fountain or well of some sort.

 

“Thank you for not tellin’ the others. That was good of you.”

 

Hanzo managed, just barely, not scream like a sixteen year old girl in a horror flick, but it was close. So very close, especially since he had neither seen nor heard the ranger before that very moment, though he forgave himself for it when he finally saw the flash of red-and-gold from behind the shrine, where the ranger sat out of easy view on the fountain steps.

 

As he approached, it was on the tip of his tongue to say  _ thank you _ but, no matter how polite it might seem, it felt  _ wrong _ , like taking credit for not kicking someone while they were already on the ground before you. And the ranger -- his ranger -- deserved better than that.

 

“I think,” Hanzo said quietly, as he came around the massive tangle of vines and trellis and stepped into its shadow, “that I continue to owe you far more gratitude than you could ever owe me, or that I can ever truly repay.”

 

His ranger sat on the second of three wide steps, just at the edge of the fountain’s basin, elbows on thighs, shoulders deeply bent, staring fixedly at a point on the ground with passionate intensity. He looked  _ exhausted _ , every line of his body proclaiming fatigue, and Hanzo’s heart ached to cross the last bit of distance between them, wrap his arms around him, and tell him to  _ rest _ , that he would stand watch and everything would be well. But he rather thought, regardless of the thanks, that he might have lost the right to do such a thing, and so he did not.

 

“I think also,” He continued, “that I owe you more than unending gratitude. Apologies, perhaps, also ceaseless in nature, and a heartfelt plea for your forgiveness for being such a faithless fucking idiot last night. Look at me.”

 

His head snapped up reflexively and Hanzo saw that his eyes were red in a manner having nothing to do with his origins, no matter how strange they might be, and swollen, and he did cross that distance then, and went to his knees, and wrapped his arms around his ranger’s shoulders, whispering fiercely, “It doesn’t matter. It  _ does not _ matter. You are the man who has saved my life, and the lives of everyone I love, and as long as you are that,  _ nothing else will ever matter. _ And I am sorry, so very sorry, to have hurt you this way.”

 

His ranger’s shoulders trembled and the breath escaped his lips in a soft, shuddering sigh. “Don’t say that. You don’t know --”

 

“I will, when you tell me. You offered it last night, and like a fool I cast the offer to know you aside.” He tightened his grip as another tremor ran through his ranger’s body. “Is it too late to say  _ yes? _ ”

 

His ranger shook his head and looked up, eyes dark, reddened with weariness and tears, and Hanzo only barely resisted the urge to kiss them away.

 

“Tell me.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your wonderful comments, your support and your encouragement. It has really kept me going and I couldn't do this without you.
> 
> I must also, however, also announce a brief posting hiatus. I've got a paying commission with an end of September deadline, the completion is which is likely to consume the remainder of this month and possibly the beginning of the next. A regular posting schedule will resume thereafter.

The sky simply did not look right -- had not, in fact, looked right since that morning, when the sun rose red above the eastern hills, hanging there like a baleful crimson eye glaring doom at the desert and everything living in it. The cloud wrack overhead swallowed it up shortly thereafter, vast, dark lenticulars piled miles into the sky and as far as the eye could see, curling around themselves like some massive, living thing looking for a place to set down its feet. When they parted enough to permit a glimpse of anything but themselves, the arch of heaven was the dangerously pale and sickly yellow that, in summer, was a precursor for heavy weather, hail and flooding rain, lightning and damaging winds, sometimes tornadoes. Now, at the tail end of October, almost November, that color sky and the savage, stifling heat the pressed down on the world beneath those clouds was unseasonal at best, unnatural at worst.

 

Nathaniel McCree, returning from battening down the animal enclosures, wished quietly that the storm, whatever kind it might be, would break. The waiting was always the worst part and this kind of waiting was particularly bad: every nerve alive and twitching, every sense physical and numinous straining to perceive something, anything. It put him far out of sorts.

 

A low rumble of thunder riding a hot gust of wind, the first to stir the ground level air since dawn, followed him up onto the ranch house’s back porch, set the wind-chimes hanging from the eaves to either side of the steps ringing with spirit-calling music. Also not a good sign: the chimes wouldn’t call in such a way if there was no need for them to do so. From inside, he heard a chair dragging across the kitchen floor and Yanaba came to the back screen door, stepped outside to join him. “Anything?”

 

“Nothing lurking around the barns, no.” A second gust, stronger than the first, rolled over them, strong enough to lift his wife’s heavy iron-and-pepper braid off her shoulder, and a louder, closer roll of thunder. “Readings settle down yet?”

 

“Not a bit.” She held the door open for him and he stepped inside, sliding the internal locks to keep the screen door in place but not yet closing the inner door.

 

The pieces of her rifle were still spread out across the kitchen table, along with her cleaning kit, a trio of 3D printers chugging away on the kitchen counters to produce her specialized ammunition. A fan of holoscreens, hanging just high enough not to be disrupted by her movements, displaying the current data provided by their web of sensor modules, a sphere of more than three hundred square miles of New Mexico, Arizona, and the multiple borders physical and more-than-physical they shared. The local telluric currents fluctuated violently across their surface, as unsettled as the ocean driven before a hurricane, the storm-surge passing through them and bleeding into the natural world in pulses that were slowly becoming more regular, more closely spaced together.

 

“Nothing’s opened up yet, but it’s only a matter of time now.” Yana remarked, evenly, as she slid the pieces of her weapon back together.

 

“So I see.” Nate fetched them both a cup of coffee and sat to help load her magazines once the rounds cooled and hardened enough to allow it, to watch the monitors and wait for whatever was coming to arrive.

 

When the storm finally broke, it did so with shocking speed and violence. The wind, gusting hotly against the shutters and the sides of the house, rose to a screaming sledgehammer as hot as the exhalations of a blast furnace, carrying with it sand and grit and something that might have been smoke and it took their combined strength to wrestle the inside door shut and bolt it in place against the force of it. Lightning, thus far not much in evidence despite the thunder, arced from cloud to cloud and fell in curtains rather than bolts, hanging suspended between earth and sky, visibly pulsing as they raked across the desert. Thunder literally shook the ground, rattled the windows in their casements and the bones in their bodies as they took cover under the kitchen table, the border wards embedded in the yard fence coming to life in an effort at blunting the storm’s ferocity. Wardfire danced with lightning and wind and the both broke around the house at least enough to keep the photovoltaic roof intact and feeding the power that let their monitors scream dire warning tones of imminent doom from overhead. Yanaba poked her head up and grabbed one.

 

“It’s close, whatever it is,” She muttered and reached up again, this time for her rifle. 

 

“So I see.” The etheric patterns had coalesced from chaotic cross-sea waves into a single stable vortex that, even as they watched, imploded, sending a secondary shockwave rippling through the world beyond the world. 

 

Outside, the storm itself  _ visibly shuddered _ , the wind curling in on itself, voice dropping from a roar, the rotation of the clouds stuttering and slowing away from tornadic intensity. A torrential downpour followed, washing the dust and the heat and the taste of lightning out of the air, drumming on the roof and cutting fresh courses through the hard-packed dirt of the yard.

 

“You think something came through?” Yanaba asked, as she tossed him his ballistic vest and shrugged into her own.

 

“Only one way to be sure of that, darlin’,” Nate replied, and went to retrieve his medical kit.

 

The hoverjeep was, predictably, not having any of it so they loaded their gear into the back of the gas-drinker: emergency medical kit, detection and mitigation equipment, the larger of her several weapons, extra ammunition. Yanaba made him strap on his own freshly cleaned and loaded by her hands sidearm before she’d let him get in the vehicle and slid behind the wheel herself, because of the two of them her night vision was better and it was rapidly getting dark. The navigation system was at least not inclined to be pestiferous, interfacing smoothly with the house’s monitors and accepting the guidance data as they pulled out. “Last solid contact was about twenty miles north of here, in the hills near Nakaibito. We can take the 491 almost all the way there.”

 

The drive into the hills was entertainingly fraught, enlivened by heavy bands of rain lashing out of the entirely natural if unseasonable storms that followed hard on the northerly’s heels and broadside, straight-line winds nearly strong enough to blow them off the road. It grew even more so once they left the 491 for surface roads that hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance since hover technology took the lead in transportation and which were prone to being washed half-away by flash flooding and blocked by downed tree limbs and, ultimately, a pair of fallen trees that forced them to leave their vehicle a mile from their presumed destination and hike the rest of the way in.

 

Yanaba took point, as was her custom, her rifle slung for the moment in favor of a machete to cut through the leg-attacking ground cover and a hiking stick to brush aside things that didn’t need to be cut. Nate carried their handheld tracking and motion detection monitors, set to ignore their own movements, his own hiking stick that doubled as a heavy shock baton in a crunch, and a neatly organized pack of medical supplies. Even with the lightning arcing overhead, their lights and vision-enhancing gear, it was dark and the hike punishingly hard, the ground underfoot a sandy, boggy mire, the rain only barely starting to slack.

 

The motion detector sang its little rising-falling alarm tone. “Movement up ahead, ten yards. We’re almost there, darlin’ so --”

 

Underbrush rustled, far closer than ten yards away and with the passage of something much more solid than falling rain, and Yanaba traded her machete for a machine pistol, flipping on some extra light as she did so. Yellow-green eyes flickered in the darkness and a muzzle covered in wet silver-gray fur, a long, slender body vanishing among the junipers and ground cover in the blink of an eye. 

 

“Whatever that was, it didn’t register on the motion detector but it did cause an etheric ripple.” Nate observed, mildly, and moved to his wife’s shoulder.

 

“So not actually a coyote, then.” The safety on her gun clicked firmly off. “Stay close.”

 

They set off in the direction the not-coyote had vanished, the sound of water roaring down a no-longer-dry arroyo rising loud enough to drown out the rain beating on the thirsty ground and the thunder still echoing among the canyons. Another sound joined it, as they came within a short stone’s throw of their destination: high and thin, a wordless wail of  _ cold _ and  _ tired _ and  _ hungry _ . 

 

Yanaba froze and he had to check his stride to avoid walking into her. “You heard that, right?”

 

“Yes, I did. Came from over thataway.” He showed her the motion detector, where a single pulsing contact glittered like a star they were probably going to have to shoot.

 

They proceeded carefully, Nate automatically moving to flanking position, Yanaba snapping her tactical visor into place to aid targeting in the somewhat less than optimal firing conditions. A second cry rose, closer, and it was by virtue of his place behind and off to the side that he saw its source before she did -- a huddled bundle on the edge of the arroyo, inches from the rushing water gnawing steadily away at the muddy bank. “Darlin’, it’s over here.”

 

The bundle shivered slightly, and he turned a targeting beam directly on it: a ratty towel, either dark to begin with or darkened with blood and mud and wet, wrapped around something small, moving weakly. A third cry, even thinner and more tired than the first too, rose from up, along with an audible gurgle and cough. Nate crossed to it and knelt, lifted the edge of the towel and dropped it back, hurriedly pulling down his own visor and activating its physical and psychic defense structures; they helped wash the afterimages of what he just saw out of his brain before they could take hold. “Leave your visor on, defense mode active. It’s...I’m not sure what it is, but it’s tiny.”

 

“Nate, what are you --” Yanaba came through the brush at his back and froze as he opened the towel completely, exposing the thing it was wrapped around to merciless light and enhanced vision gear.

 

“It’s a  _ baby. _ ” Nate finally managed, after a moment of stunned silence. “Umbilicus is still attached -- still some blood in it, even. Fresh out of the wrapper. How the --”

 

“Nathaniel McCree, step away from that thing  _ now. _ ” Yanaba’s voice was low and tight.

 

He shrugged out of his backpack. “Just a minute, darlin’. Gotta find something to wrap --”

 

“ _ Nate. _ ” Her voice somehow managed to tighten another notch. “ _ Get back.” _

 

He glanced over his shoulder and found the muzzle of her rifle leveled with the bundle, her mouth an expressionless line beneath her visor. “Yanaba -- it’s a  _ baby. _ ” He checked again. “ _ He’s _ a baby. Can’t be more than a few hours old. Whatever happened -- however he came to be here -- he didn’t do it himself. He’s not the threat here.”

 

“That is an  _ infant naayéé _ , Nate. It’s only innocent  _ now _ , because it can’t  _ bite you in half yet. _ ” The tightness was giving way to exasperation. “Step away. I promise I won’t let it suffer.”

 

“He. Not it.  _ He _ .” Very deliberately he opened his pack and very deliberately removed an emergency support bubble which he very deliberately inflated and began running the internal readiness diagnostics and very deliberately removed the little bundle of squirm and too many limbs and a head that wasn’t shaped quite right from his ratty old towel and placed him in said bubble, which immediately began scanning to determine his medical intervention needs. “And he’s human enough that I’m getting readings here and indicators that he’s suffering from exposure and dehydration and borderline hypothermia. So it’s possible that he’s been out here since he was born.”

 

“The mother probably abandoned it when she saw what it was.” Yanaba said, after a long, uncomfortably silent moment broken only by the emergency support bubble’s assorted diagnostic tones. She lowered her weapon and flipped on the safety. “It’s a  _ monster _ , Nate.”

 

“A  _ baby _ monster.” He looked up from the diagnostic panel. “You see any tracks coming in?”

Yanaba snorted. “In  _ this _ mess? Fuck no, are you  _ kidding? _ ”

 

“Not even coyote tracks.” Nate replied, and initiated the processes that would provide hydration and nutrients and bring the little bundle of squirm back to a safe and healthy core body temperature. 

 

Yanaba was silent for a moment. Then, ungrudgingly, “It  _ did _ lead us here. Not that that doesn’t mean that some _ one _ or some _ thing _ isn’t elaborately fucking with us.”

 

“Point.” He tucked the towel into a biohazard bag and vacuum sealed it. “That’s something we can figure out once we get back to civilization, don’t you think?” He tried it and, to his surprise, the bubble’s internal antigrav units were willing to work; it lifted off the ground to easy physical guidance range.

 

“Nate…” She sighed. “Don’t get attached. All I ask.  _ Please. _ ”

 

“I’ll try, darlin’.” He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. “I think we should call him Jesse. He  _ looks _ like a Jesse.”

 

He was pretty glad her other hand was too full of rifle to hit him.

 

*

 

Hanzo attempted to arrange is face into an expression that wasn’t unadulterated horror and felt himself failing completely. “You -- your parents --”

 

“Yeah.” The ranger’s smile was small and sad and the pain behind it lodged in Hanzo’s throat; he found himself unable to swallow or speak past it. “My mother, at least, and I can’t really say I blame her -- I’ve seen the pictures of what I looked like back then. Screamin’ and runnin’ is probably the least of what I’d do.”

 

“That...that is  _ not funny _ , Jesse.” Hanzo’s voice sounded strangled in his own ears.

 

“C’mon now, darlin’ -- it’s a  _ little _ funny.” Another small, sad smile.

 

“ _ No. _ ” He wished, at that moment, that he had more limbs of his own to hold him with. “What happened -- well, I know what happened, your grandmother must have --”

 

“Nana McCree was pretty hardcore, I’ll admit. Came from a long and illustrious line of monster-hunters on her mama’s side of the family and, bein’ the only daughter of her parents, took the responsibilities pretty seriously. She and Pop Pop tried to have kids of their own, but it never took, so she ended up training two of her nieces to continue the family business. We...don’t really get along that well.” The smile vanished so completely it was like it had never been. “By the time they found me, Nana was past childbearing -- past sixty, both of them, even though they were pretty spry and still doing the work of helping patrol and protect their chunk of the desert around where they lived. They owned a little ranch outside Gallup, which is a ways to the west of here, near the Arizona border. But, no matter how spry they were, nobody was going to believe Nana gave birth to me, so grandparents it was. They also knew pretty quick that they were going to need some help, so they called a couple old friends before the week was out…”

 

*

 

Gabe and Jack arrived under cover of darkness within a couple days of the call, rolling in on a moonless midnight driving a vehicle with all its transponder signals carefully spoofed and using a pair of their more load-bearing alternate identities to travel under. Nate appreciated both the speed and the discretion, if not being woken up by Gabriel ghosting through a crack in the defenses and poking him in the ribs barely an hour after he laid his head on the pillow.

 

“Boo.” Gabe had more eyes open than should be allowed by law and was wearing his widest, fangiest grin, which was a version of him only his husband really enjoyed waking up to. “How’s it hanging, old man? Jack and I understand that you’ve got gremlin issues.”

 

“You made good time.” Nate glanced over his shoulder at Yanaba, sleeping undisturbed, and decided to leave it that way -- it was technically his duty rotation, after all. “Where’s your man?”

 

“Waiting out on the porch with our gear.” Gabe stepped back and Nate rolled out of bed, slipping into his robe and slippers and padding downstairs to open the door.

 

As promised, Jack was waiting surrounded by duffle bags and equipment cases, his visor and implants engaged to give him a reasonable approximation of vision, back to the door and gazing out over the yard and the surrounding outbuildings. He turned as the door opened, and grinned that tight-lipped grin of his, and let himself be pulled into an embrace. “Good to see you, too, Nate. Gimme a hand with this?”

“Surely.” They schlepped all the gear into a corner of the sitting room, got them settled there for the nonce, and Nate fetched coffee for himself and Jack, who appeared to need it at least as much as he did. “Thank you for coming -- I know it was short notice but Yana and I could really use an extra couple hands and brains right now.”

 

“We got that impression from all the screaming, yeah.” Gabriel replied, and waved off an offer of something stronger.

 

Jack drank deeply and then set his cup aside. “So...what happened?”

 

Nate took a deep breath and told them. They started exchanging speaking glances about halfway through his recitation and by the time he was done, Jack was regarding him with naked concern. “Why didn’t Yanaba just  _ shoot _ it?”

 

“Nate wouldn’t let me.” Yanaba answered that question for herself, padding down the stairs in her own nightclothes and stepping into a hug from Gabriel. “I’m glad you’re here. Maybe  _ you _ can figure out how to feed it.”

 

“It hasn’t eaten in a week?” Gabriel asked, a faint hint of alarm in his tone.

 

“He’s sleepin’ in a support bubble -- it’s keeping him hydrated and feedin’ him liquid nutrients but that’s not makin’ in him very  _ happy. _ ” Nate replied tiredly. “Mostly he’s like any other infant and spends most of his time sleepin’ and eatin’ and makin’ diapers but when he’s  _ awake? _ Y’all will  _ know _ it.”

 

It was almost on cue. From upstairs there came a high, thin, shivery wail, a sound that crossed a multitude of borders, and the wards built into the walls and foundation and the fence outside came to life in order to contain its force. Gabriel’s whole shape shimmered for a moment in response, swirling shadows and dark owl wings and too many eyes, before it stabilized back into something mostly human. He took the stairs two at a time as he went up and left the rest of them scrambling in his wake, a not uncommon occurrence, and by the time they caught up he was leaning over the support bubble, hands pressed flat and spread across the plassteel hood, gazing down at its contents. The contents were kicking and flailing assorted limbs but not crying any more, which was a welcome thing after so many days.

 

“Be careful.” Yanaba said sharply as Gabriel reached down and unlocked the hood, sliding it back.

 

“Always am.” Gabriel cooed, the tone clearly meant for the bundle of squirm. “Hey,  _ bebé _ , look at  _ you _ . Look at all those toes -- that’s a  _ lot _ of toes.  _ So many toes. _ We’re going to have to do something about that but for now…?” 

 

He reached down and picked the bundle of squirm -- whom Nate was trying very hard not to call Jesse in Yanaba’s hearing -- and cuddled him against his chest. There wasn’t a onesie on Earth meant to accommodate that shape, not even a sleep sack, but they’d managed to jury-rig an effective diaper and procured a soft lambswool blanket to wrap him in. He kicked a little against Gabe’s chest, and an appendage that was far too bonelessly flexible and weirdly jointed to be properly described as a hand wrapped itself around his fingers as he stroked the baby’s face gently and dragged them into his mouth.

 

“ _ Wow _ , that’s a lot of  _ teeth _ , too.” Gabe pressed a kiss to the baby’s approximation of a forehead. “A  _ lot _ of teeth. What do you need so many sharp teeth for,  _ bebé? _ ”

 

“Traditionally, the  _ naayéé _ consume human flesh and blood.” Yanaba deadpanned. “And from a fairly early age at that.”

 

“Well,  _ that’s _ not going to work, now is it?” Gabriel nuzzled the little critter again and made no move to pull his fingers away from teeth that were, while tiny, multitudinous, needle-sharp, and entirely capable of reaching the bones of the unwary; Nate had spent some time with his hand under a biotic field emitter as testimony to that fact. “You don’t need to eat people, you know? There’s lots of other nice things to eat. You can have those teeth later if you need them but for now can we try something else, little one? Come on, I know you can do it. Let me see you --”

 

A fruity little giggle rose out of the bundle in Gabriel’s arms, a sound so perfectly sweet and pure and human that even Yanaba peeked in when he carried the bundle over to them. He still had too many limbs and that head with its enormous sealed-shut eyes and weird shape was still the sort of thing that would induce nightmares in the unprepared but now, instead of a mouthful of meat-eater teeth, it had rosy gums and drool and lips stretched into a wide, sweet smile.

 

“He’s probably going to need something more substantial than just formula.” Gabriel said, and let him have his fingers to gnaw on again.

 

“We’ve got goat milk that hasn’t become cheese yet.” Yanaba suggested, and looked astonished at herself.

 

“If you’ve got any fresh red meat to puree for enrichment, that might be a good idea, too. He’s pretty hungry.” Gabriel looked up, a little smile settled on his face. “What’re you calling him?”

 

“We’re not,” said Yanaba at the same moment Nate said, “Jesse.”

 

“Jesse.  _ Jessito. _ Yeah, I can see that.” Gabriel cooed again and was rewarded with another sweet monster-baby giggle. “He even  _ looks _ like a Jesse. Jack, I think we’re going to have to stay awhile.”

 

“Yeah, I saw that one coming.” Jack gave Yanaba a look comprised of equal parts resignation and amusement. “I think we’re outnumbered and outflanked here, Yana.”

 

“ _ Obviously. _ ” Yanaba sighed, and went downstairs to liquify a steak.

 

*

 

“Gabe was convinced from the start that at least one of my parents was human, because he got my teeth to go away that night just by askin’ nicely.” Jesse was steadfastly refusing to meet his eyes. “It took him the best part of three months to get me into a totally human shape and he’s been kinda smug about that ever since because the smart money said it wasn’t possible at all. Most of the old-time  _ naayéé _ weren’t real human-lookin’ no matter who their mothers were, with a few exceptions, and they were...really pretty special exceptions. But Gabe’s nothin’ if not stubborn and he wasn’t willing to give up on the point, because it probably would have become a matter of life and death eventually.”

 

“Your grandmother,” Hanzo said, his mouth dry, the question not quite willing to form on his tongue. “She wouldn’t have...”

 

“Nana? Nah. For all her telling Pop Pop not to get attached, she took hold pretty hard herself. Used to say that I grew on her like saddle mold.” An amused little snort. “The rest of the local family wasn’t so keen, particularly when it became clear I was human on the outside only and that was pretty early.”

 

“That isn’t true.” Hanzo said, and silently willed him to meet his eyes, a signal he clearly did not receive. 

 

“True enough for government work.” Dryly. “It became clear because I killed things without even trying hard. Or meaning to.”

 

Hanzo opened his mouth and closed it again without any of the possible sounds trying to crowd their way up his throat making it past his lips. Jesse, mercifully, didn’t notice. 

 

“It was little things at first -- bugs, mostly. Scorpions are pests, y’know, and finding them all shriveled up just meant they could be swept out instead of squished. Spiders. I  _ hated _ spiders when I was little. I think I might’a had a bit of a complex about things with too many legs. I’d just...look at ‘em hard and they’d keel over. I was too little to make the logical connection and it happened too fast for anyone else to see it for the longest time.” His eyes dropped closed. “One day when I was five, almost ready to go to school, one of the goats I was playin’ King of the Hill with butted me off the side of a rock with a bit more enthusiasm than usual and...it hurt. Skinned knee, bloodied lip, I was scared and mad and it came pourin’ out of me and before I could stop it everything for a hundred feet around me just...died. Everything -- the goats, the plants in the field, birds fell out of the sky. Gabe came running when he heard me screaming and caught it with both barrels -- he’s not particularly killable but I still hurt him badly enough that it took him the best part of two days to reform. Nana tranqed me from range and they bound me up in wards until they could figure out what it was and how to control it.” A tiny, humorless smile. “That was mostly Jack and Nana -- control and precision were the gifts they gave me.”

 

“You were so young -- you must have been so  _ frightened _ .” At five, he had been  _ aware _ of the interest Uncle Toshiro had in him, but was still too young to fully appreciate what it meant beyond the specialness of it.

 

“More scared that I was going to hurt someone else.” His voice was rough and when he opened his eyes there was a hint of moisture around their rims that had not been there before. “I told Nana and Pop Pop I didn’t want to go to school and they agreed that it was probably a good idea for me to stay away from other kids until I was old enough to keep my emotions under control.” A pause. “Y’know, this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten with this conversation? Normally by the time I get to the whole  _ baby monster cured by my terrifying smoke Dad _ bit, it’s all over.”

 

Which confirmed at least one suspicion. Hanzo’s heart ached and he said, quietly, “We don’t have to continue if you don’t want to -- I can see how much this pains you.”

 

“It’s almost a good kinda hurt, darlin’.” One of the ranger’s hands found his and squeezed tightly. “Of course, the rest of the family found out. And there was a blow-up between Nana and the eldest of her nieces, Maritza, who lived on the Rez and was one of the local hunter-protectors. A bunch of hard words were said and they never did reconcile, which was a problem in the long run.” Finally, finally, those dark eyes turned to him. “Gabe and Jack stayed with us until I was ten, which was longer than they’d stayed in any one place for years, and probably about two years longer than was technically safe for any of us.”

 

“How did they know each other? Your grandparents and Gabe and Jack?” The question came out before he could stop it.

 

“They served together in an international unit under the auspices of the United Nations. Ana and Rein and a handful of others, too. Technically it was an all-volunteer outfit, it’s just that all the volunteers had particularly refined and unusual skill sets that allowed them to meet the parameters of their mission -- which was, actually, keepin’ things from Beyond out of this world or, if they managed to wiggle their way in, evictin’ them again with extreme prejudice.” Again, the smile that crossed his face had little in the way of humor in it. “Gabe and Jack got into their current condition in the line of duty and, while it took a long time, the DoD finally got around to acknowledging that fact, which is why they get to stay here unmolested now. For a while that wasn’t true, and they had to keep movin’ in order to stay ahead of the people assigned to determine exactly how hard to kill they really were. Lingerin’ as long as they did, even in the geographical ass-end of nowhere, was a huge risk for them t’take and I’ve never --” He stopped, swallowed hard, continued on. “I’ve never quite felt that I deserved it. Gabe hates that, but it’s true.”

 

*

 

Two days after his tenth birthday, Jesse sat on top of the ranch house roof and watched the men he called  _ Papi _ and  _ Jack _ drive away -- waited, point in fact, until there was nothing left to see of their vehicle, even with the running lights on, and there was no real reason left to stay. When he climbed back down, he dug out the wards that they made for him and which he hadn’t needed at all for going on two years and put them back on. Nate was proud of the maturity and self-knowledge that took, and also worried enough that, when he went into town for the next few weeks, he made sure there were enough chores available to keep Jesse busy. Fortunately, none of the MiBs who’d been sniffing around came to the ranch while he wasn’t home and, a few weeks later, they faded away entirely, chasing other leads. 

 

When Jesse turned eleven, he also started to grow. He’d always been on the lean and lanky side, all knees and elbows and feet just big enough to trip over if he wasn’t being careful, but now, seemingly overnight, he shot up ten inches and outgrew almost all his clothes, his shoes, and his bed. He took a positively unholy joy in being taller than Yanaba for the first time ever, a fact about which she grumbled  _ and _ smiled, because it was something that made him demonstrably  _ happy _ , a thing he’d had in short supply for quite some time. The spring between eleven and twelve, he decided he’d like to try going to school in town again and so they enrolled him and requested that his records be transferred over from the online academy where he’d studied his academics thus far. 

 

By twelve, he was starting to fill out in across the shoulders and chest, a good two inches taller than Nate, and more alone than he’d ever been, for all that he was now going into town every day and spending most of it with kids his own age. Maritza’s children lived there with her ex and they had been warned, in general terms, not to mix with their not-cousin because he wasn’t right -- a warning they helpfully shared with the peers they’d known all their lives, and the precise dimensions of the not-right-ness grew in the telling as it passed among them. Jesse put his head down and held his tongue and put the wards back on and concentrated on his studies: he was the sort of student every teacher loved, the kind that didn’t have to be nagged to do the reading or turn in his homework on time, and while he was never going to love math for its own sake, he at least tolerated it for its relationship to science (which he enjoyed) and music (which he was good at  _ and _ enjoyed). The librarian was his best friend that year, feeding his appetite for books, for worlds he could escape into that were at least different than the one he presently occupied, and he made her a lovely thank you card that he handed back with the last of them at the end of the year. After that, he saw no reason to return, not so dedicated to the idea of having friends that he was willing to suffer the slings and arrows of adolescent cruelty to search them out. Loneliness was a grief he was used to, after all, and he could learn just as well at his terminal in the study.

 

In the winter between thirteen and fourteen, Nate began to feel his age -- not that he hadn’t been feeling it before but those long, dark months were colder and wetter than most and his joints let him know about it at length. Jesse effortlessly picked up his slack, for which he was eternally grateful, rising early to tend the animals and put on the coffee, walking miles of fence to check and maintain the integrity of the physical and numinous barriers, moving his terminal into the living room so he could run errands in the house and do his schoolwork at the same time. Yanaba fussed over him to excess, which he tolerated to the best of his abilities, and so did the boy, which gave them time together on a daily basis that they used to improve his emergency medical skills, to work on the little handicrafts that they both favored when they were too tired to think, to read their way through each others’ lists of favorite novels. They were, in fact, halfway through  _ Lonesome Dove _ , one of Nate’s all-time favorites, the afternoon he started to feel a touch dyspeptic and then a little nauseous, and then a lot tired. The last thing he saw, as the world started going light around him, was Jesse reaching for him, and the look on his face.

 

Nate’s will stipulated cremation, which was duly accomplished, and his ashes brought home in a ceramic urn glazed the deep blue of the night sky over the desert mixed with tiny flecks of silver. For the first month after, Jesse and Yanaba drifted around the ranch like ghosts themselves, doing what needed to be done mostly on autopilot, numb and gray with grief. Toward the middle of the second, they began bumping into each others’ edges again, became aware of one another, and came back together to do more than just function.  _ Just you and me now _ became the fulcrum around which their lives turned and they made the effort to keep it that way, sitting together in front of the fireplace to do coursework assignments and read novels, to watch a new old movie on the holotank, to do the 3D design work for Jesse’s own custom ammunition, built around his strengths and the nature of the power running in his veins. They both knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d be taking up Yanaba’s half of the household’s self-chosen duties, no matter how little Maritza liked it, because there were things abroad in the desert by night and day that would answer to no ordinary bullets. 

 

Yanaba caught a cold at the tail end of spring that nagged her relentlessly all through the summer. It settled in to stay as summer faded into autumn, sapping her strength to the dregs, forcing her to spend more time abed in the mornings than she liked, and finally whole days abed, feverish and too weak to stand. She didn’t want him to call an ambulance, or to go to the hospital, didn’t want to leave him alone on the ranch, not because she didn’t trust him but because she feared what would happen to him if she did. Jesse tended to her with all the skill he’d been taught over the years but there was one thing he lacked: a true healer’s touch that could have chased what troubled her away when even the biotic emitters did nothing but help her hold ground. And that he did not have, and never would, because healing was not his gift. In late October, just after his fourteenth birthday, as his grandmother lay sleeping the feverish, restless sleep of an invalid, he did the one thing he had dreaded more than anything else and called Maritza, to beg for her help. She and her eldest sons, the not-cousins who’d been a year or two ahead of him in school, arrived four hours later and an ambulance from town shortly thereafter. Before she left, as they were loading her onto the litter, she took him by the hand and made him swear his vows to her and sealed the promise he gave with her own. Maritza went with the ambulance, in her own hoverjeep; the not-cousins stayed behind, and after dinner Jesse retreated to his room, ill at ease and not entirely sure why.

 

He woke, sometime in the dark hours after midnight, to the sound of voices drifting up from downstairs -- quiet but clearly audible, because if the house’s heating system did anything, it carried sound.

 

“Everything’s ready?” That was Maritza, low and soft and somehow more dangerous for it.

 

“Yeah.” The Eldest of the not-cousins. “Aunt Yanaba had a lot of the things we needed already in her kit. No real need to go searching for them.”

 

“That’s because she knew that this would need to be done eventually and prepared to do it.” Crisply, cool, and the calm certainty of it turned the blood to ice in his veins, chased the last traces of sleep from his mind. “What is it, Chase?”

 

“Mom...are you  _ sure _ about this? I mean -- if this was what he wanted, if this was his  _ fault _ , why’d he call for  _ help? _ All he had to do was  _ wait _ .” The Younger of the not-cousins, who’d been almost nice to him at dinner and offered to help with the dishes and clearly wanted to talk to him but got glared off by his big brother. “If he were... _ hurting people _ it’d be one thing but he’s --”

 

“ _ Naayéé _ , Chase. A monster in human shape like that  _ thing _ Yanaba called his father.” Her voice cooled and hardened and Jesse was already dressed and pulling on his hiking boots, dragging the bug-out bags that Gabe insisted he have packed and ready to go out of the back of his closet. “That’s all he is and all he can ever really be, no matter what he might  _ look _ like -- if anything, they helped make him  _ worse _ because now it’s  _ hidden _ instead of written on his flesh like it should be. Do you want to wait for him to  _ show _ it before something’s done about him?”

 

Silence. Jesse eased his window open, put the first bag on the back porch roof and reached for the second. The warmest of his jackets was downstairs hanging by the door and there was nothing to be done for that, so he pulled on another flannel shirt and the pair of gloves sitting on the chest of drawers.

 

“No. No, but --”

 

“No buts. We can’t hesitate in this -- not the way Yanaba did. She died thinking this thing loved her --”

 

The sound of pain that came out of him was completely involuntary, choked off as quickly as he could, and it was already too late.

 

“What was that?”

 

“Not sure -- he’s been upstairs since just after dinner. Sleeping the last time I checked. You want me to…?”

 

“Yes. Chase, stay here.” 

 

Footsteps on the stairs but Jesse was already sliding off the porch roof after his bags, whispering the charm that Gabe taught him that would call the shadows, make him physically indistinct, mask his trail from even the most determined prying magic or skilled tracking. He thought Chase caught a glimpse of him as he vaulted the yard fence but, if he did, he held his tongue and stayed where he was; it was a small enough thing to be grateful for but Jesse never forgot it and repaid it as best he was able when circumstances allowed. That night, however, he thought of nothing but the best route to take across the desert and into the hills, as far from what remained of his not-really-family as he could get before the sun rose.

 

*

 

“Nana and Pop Pop had a little place up in the hills -- callin’ it a cabin was  _ exceedingly _ generous but it had cots to sleep on and a wood-burnin’ stove for heat and cooking and a well for water. We went up twice a year to make sure the roof hadn’t caved in and nothing had gotten into the supplies we kept there, so I knew there’d be enough to keep me alive for awhile.” Jesse continued, evidently completely oblivious to the amount of pressure being exerted on his hand and the tiny sounds of distress forcing their way up Hanzo’s throat. “It took me three days to get there by a roundabout route and --”

 

“Your family was going to kill you.” Hanzo finally managed to grind out, around the equal parts sorrow and fury fighting for control of his tongue.

 

He was silent for a long moment after that outburst, his shoulders curving inward, head bowed enough that his hair almost completely shielded his face. When he spoke, it was with a weariness that carried the weight of years. “They weren’t my family. Not really. Never were. To them I was just a thing that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow as big as it did.” He looked up, dark eyes tired, and took Hanzo’s hand in both of his own. “To give them the minimal credit they deserve, they thought it was me -- that I’d finally shown my true colors, drank Pop Pop and Nana’s souls for their power, and then tried to cover my tracks by playin’ the lovin’, concerned adopted grandson.”

 

“I’m not so certain that’s something they deserve.” Hanzo said fiercely. “How could they believe that -- even if they didn’t know you, they should have known your grandparents better than that.”

 

“My grandparents went soft, and took an unnatural thing under their roof, because it was a baby when they found it. If they’d put one of Nana’s monster-killing rounds through my forehead or strangled me in the cradle, that they’d have understood. Because that’s what they should have done -- a  _ naayéé _ that’s too small to be much of a danger to deal with is a blessing not to be cast aside.” Dryly. “I don’t blame them for what they wanted to do. It was their responsibility to the world and the people in it, as they saw it.”

 

_ I will, _ Hanzo thought, but did not say, instead reaching out to brush the hair out of his ranger’s face. “It’s good that you know better, at least. That the people who love you know better.”

 

Jesse was silent for a long moment, his eyes closed and his cheek pressed into Hanzo’s palm. “It’s gettin’ pretty late in the day -- we should probably get you back to the hacienda before sundown.”

 

“I have no quarrel with that.” Hanzo pushed creakily to his feet, his knees issuing a crackling series of objections over being forced to move after kneeling on cold stone for so long, and offered his ranger a hand up, as well, which he accepted. “It’s been a...very long day.”

 

Jesse levered himself to his feet, swaying a bit at first, and then a bit more, and then Hanzo stepped into him and put his arms around his waist to help keep him steady and upright. “It’s okay -- I’m alright -- just a little dizzy. Must’a stood up too fast.”

 

“Hold onto me. Tighter, I’m not so fragile as all that.” Hanzo freed a hand long enough to scoop up his bag, one arm around his ranger, the ranger’s arm around his shoulders. “Walk with me. Have you eaten anything today? How long have you been here?” A thought occurred to him. “You didn’t sleep all the way through last night and then you -- you must be  _ completely exhausted. _ ” 

 

Binky peered around the gate as they approached it and  _ boofed _ softly in greeting.

 

“So  _ that’s _ how you found me.” Jesse sounded amused, and tired. “I grabbed something before I left the house, yeah.”

 

“But you haven’t slept again.” For the first time, he regretted stashing his phone so deep in his bag. “Do you think you can make it back walking?”

 

“My place is closer. We can call you a pick up from there.” Binky, thankfully, both knew the way and took point.

 

“Just me? Did I snore too much for you?” Hanzo asked, trying for light and landing considerably short.

 

“Nah. Slept like a rock. Just thought -- I just figured…” His voice drifted off and, once again, he refused to meet Hanzo’s eyes. “This has all been a lot.” 

 

The ranger’s house came into view in the deepening twilight and, for the moment at least, Hanzo chose to let it lie there while he used Jesse’s keys to undo the locks and guide his ranger inside, through the kitchen and down the hall into his bedroom. Once there, his ranger seemed incapable of resisting the gravitational pull of his pillows, sitting down on the edge of the bed and folding to his side with a soft groan. Hanzo hesitated for a moment, then took off his boots and helped him out of his cloak and jacket. Jesse stubbornly held onto the one and Hanzo spread the cloak back over him as an extra blanket, since it seemed to give him such comfort, and went to hang his jacket on the pegs next to the door. And to relock the door, which gave him a ridiculous amount of comfort, almost as much as the sight of Binky stretched his full length on the world’s most comfortable couch, with a pillow under his head and the throw-blankets pulled down over him. “Are you allowed to sleep there? Yes? Okay, I won’t chase you then.”

 

Genji had sent approximately four hundred texts in the last few hours, none of which he bothered to read before replying with one of his own.  _ Completely safe. Found the ranger. We’re at his house w/Binky right now. Probably best to stay here for the time being? He’s totally exhausted. _

 

His brother responded while he was eating cold leftover eggs and salsa straight from the storage container.  _ Gabe says yes, the ranger’s place is at least as secure as the hacienda. He or somebody or him and more than one somebody will come down to help stand watch shortly. Are you sure you’re okay???? _

_ Yes. _ He paused, considered, continued.  _ Send my tablet and bag along with? I’m expecting some results back from the archive. _

 

_ Will do. Stay safe, aniki. _

 

_ Of course. _

 

His ranger was fully asleep by the time he returned to the bedroom, curled around himself on his side, wrapped completely in his cloak. Hanzo drew the rest of the covers over him, debated silently with himself for a moment, then shucked off his own shoes and overshirt, and lay down next to him, not quite touching, close enough to do so if necessary. Jesse stirred slightly and half-woke, eyes dark and drowsy as they met his own. “You don’t have t’do this, y’know?”

 

“What?” Hanzo asked, puzzled.

 

“You don’t have to…” His eyes drifted closed again, and his voice drifted away, and Hanzo decided he didn’t really want to know the answer, not when the pain that drove it was so clear. Instead, greatly daring again, he wrapped an arm around his ranger’s waist and counted his breaths until the slow, even rhythm of them lulled him down into sleep, as well.

 

*

 

When he woke, they were no longer alone.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiatus is over. ^_^

_ At some point after he fell asleep, Jesse had turned to face him and now they lay entangled in a mass of cloak and covers and intertwined limbs, with his ranger’s head just beneath his chin, nestled against his chest, as though seeking comfort in the warmth of his body. And it was both comfortable and warm, cocooned in sheets and blankets that smelled of them both and the subtler scents of home, fresh tatami and free-flowing water and the perfume of the trees on the wind that swept down the sides of the mountain. Drowsily he opened his eyes and drowsily he looked out over his grandmother’s water garden through the half-open shoji, wisps of mist rising from the spring-fed pond, the trees ringing it a riot of scarlet and crimson, golden and copper, the autumn-cool breeze on his face and hands a delicious contrast to the ranger’s warm breath on his throat. One of his hands lazily found its way into Jesse’s hair and he stirred in response, shifted slightly, erased the last of the space between them, and it was all he could do not to bend down and kiss him awake, to spend the rest of the morning and the day after giving him whatever comfort he might desire. Their lips had just brushed for the first time when the sound of the shoji sliding still further drew his attention and he realized that they were not alone. _

 

_ “About time you got here.” The ranger who was not  _ **_his_ ** _ ranger drawled from his place on the verandah, beast-golden eyes glinting in the early morning light. “Took you long enough.” _

 

_ Hanzo stiffened and, next to him, Jesse murmured indistinctly and half-opened dark eyes dazed with interrupted sleep and uncured fatigue.  _

 

_ “Shhhhh,” Hanzo whispered to him and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Go back to sleep, koishii. You’re safe here.” _

 

_ He waited until Jesse drifted back down, only then sliding out of his arms and drawing the covers back over him to keep away the chill. He stepped into the shoes waiting for him, slid the shoji completely closed, and stood there for a moment with his back to the ranger-who-was-not-his-ranger, breathing the cool air of the mountains, of the shrine, until he was certain he could control himself. When he turned around, he found that the not-ranger had abandoned the verandah for the mossy stones ringing the pond, crouched in the shadow a scarlet maple watching the bright-scaled fish rising from the depths of the dark water to feed off the surface. For a moment, he did as well, and tried to permit the peace of doing so to fully infuse his spirit, forced his hands to sit open on his thighs as he knelt and breathed and finally said, “Was it you?” _

 

_ “Hmmm?” The not-ranger looked up, head tilted quizzically, eyes wide and disingenuously innocent and Hanzo found his hands curling into his fists and he swore he felt the teeth lengthening in his mouth. _

 

_ “Was it you,” He bit off each word sharply and precisely, “who brought him into this world? Who abandoned him to pain and loneliness and self-doubt? And, if it was  _ **_not_ ** _ you,  _ **_who was it?_ ** _ ” _

 

_ The not-ranger stared at him, wordlessly, for several seconds, his eyes growing gradually rounder and the corners of his mouth sliding into an unnaturally wide smile and finally he threw his head back and  _ **_laughed_ ** _. Hanzo felt a rumble begin low in his chest, one that clawed its way up his throat and emerged as a wordless sound of fury functionally indistinguishable from a growl, and the only reason he didn’t lunge across the space separating them was because he saw the not-ranger  _ **_waiting_ ** _ for him to do so and knew where that would end for both of them. He could not, however, force his hands to unclench. _

 

_ “Ah, cousin.” The not-ranger wiped his eyes with the back of one hand as his burst good humor ran its course. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised -- of  _ **_course_ ** _ defending your mate it what it takes to make you show your fangs.” _

 

_ Hanzo bristled and only barely resisted to urge to actually bare his teeth. “Is that a  _ **_no_ ** _?” _

 

_ “Peace, cousin.” The tips of two clawed fingers came to rest in the center of his forehead, and suddenly there was no distance between them, and he felt calm pouring through him from that point of contact, peeling the tension out of his shoulders and his spine, almost against his will. “I am not your enemy. And, no, I am not the one who made him.” A sharp-toothed smile. “In fact, historically speaking, I’m more likely to be found  _ **_killing_ ** _ his kind, not fathering them. Or, to be pedantic about it, tricking the powerful but not too smart ones into accidentally killing themselves.” _

 

_ “But you  _ **_were_ ** _ there the night his grandparents found him.” He opened his hands and found himself fighting the urge to rest his head against the not-ranger’s shoulder. _

 

_ “I was. I carried him away, you see.” Hanzo looked up quickly, and found the not-ranger’s face inches from his own, sorrow in his golden eyes. “It’s good he never went searching for his mother. There wouldn’t be much left to find.” _

 

_ Hanzo shivered convulsively. “You saved him.” _

 

_ “I helped. It seemed the thing to do.” The not-ranger settled down cross-legged a handspan away. “That meddlesome old woman who lives in a hole in the ground  _ **_might_ ** _ have had something to do with it.” _

 

_ “We have spoken.” Hanzo said dryly. “Did she send you to me, as well?” _

 

_ “ _ **_Maybe_ ** _.” Those golden eyes flicked away, and then back. “ _ **_Maybe not._ ** _ ” _

 

_ “Oh for  _ **_fuck’s sake_ ** _.” Hanzo snapped. “Are you  _ **_serious_ ** _? This is my  _ **_life_ ** _ at stake here, a straight answer would be  _ **_wildly_ ** _ appreciated.” _

 

_ “Unfortunately, those are rarely in my repertoire and the lack is a sorry side-effect of being related to me.” A sharp-toothed grin, completely undisturbed by Hanzo’s tone, and he found himself wrestling with the urge to throw the not-ranger in the pond again. “But, for the record? You are choosing wisely. And growing stronger by the moment. That’s why we’re all here. Well, one of the reasons.” _

 

_ “Shared dreams.” Hanzo grabbed his frustration and forced it back down. “This is my dream, and I brought him into it?” _

 

_ The not-ranger planted his chin on his fist and rolled his eyes heavenward. “I think we  _ **_just_ ** _ had a conversation about straight answers.” _

 

_ “So,  _ **_yes._ ** _ ” His reward was the world’s fangiest grin of encouragement. “Because even though I was only here once...and terrible things happened to me here...it still feels safe to me? Because this was the last place I was wholly and completely myself before…” His eyes stung. “This is the last place I was whole and safe, and it will keep him whole and safe, as well. And...if I took him to Hanamura...the Lady might not see him as I do.” _

 

_ “A not-irrational chain of suppositions.” The not-ranger murmured encouragingly. _

 

_ “And the other reason?” Hanzo asked, rhetorically, and allowed his gaze to finally drift across the garden, and the trees beyond it that almost but not entirely screened the highest point of the gabled shrine roof from view. “I am going to have to go back.” _

 

_ The not-ranger was silent but regarded him steadily with something like compassion in his unnaturally bright eyes. Hanzo took a deep, ragged breath that had no peace in it and released it in a shuddering sigh that took none of the emotion churning in his gut with it. “What would it cost me,” He asked carefully, “to receive one true answer from your lips?” _

 

_ “Only one?” The not-ranger replied, tone musing. “A task of my choosing, to be performed when I ask it, without hesitation.” _

 

_ “Did you know her -- the Shimada warrior who came to fight the Serpent-Wolf all those years ago?” Hanzo asked, almost before he realized that was the question he most wanted answered. _

 

_ “Yes, I knew her -- then and now. We are kin, after all.” He reached out again, and the tip of one clawed finger rested in the center of his chest. “You need to wake up.” _

 

*

 

Hanzo jerked unceremoniously awake and, for an instant, he had no idea where he was, head swimming with disorientation, with the sudden change in time and place and he was looking up at something looming over him in the warm mostly-darkness, something with enormous glowing green eyes set in an angularly misshapen face that bore only a passing resemblance to humanity. The sound that escaped him wasn’t the loudest shriek he’d ever uttered, but the decibel level caused the looming monstrosity to recoil and emit a high-pitched sound of its own and that allowed him to roll across the bed and snatch up one of the fireplace tools to act as a makeshift weapon as he scrambled to his feet. Jesse, still lying curled on his side almost on the edge of the bed, didn’t so much as stir at the commotion.

 

“ _ Get away from him! _ ” Hanzo hefted the ash shovel into a first strike position that his long-ago sword instructor would definitely not have approved of and made ready to charge.

 

“ _ Hanzo, wait!” _ The monster yelped in reply, gesticulating frantically. “ _ It’s me! _ ”

 

He recognized the voice at once, even muffled as it was, and he lowered his weapon slightly. “Hana?”

 

“ _ Yes. _ ” She advanced a step into the wan shaft of light falling through the partially opened bedroom door.

 

“What in the name of all the gods and all of our ancestors do you have on your head?” Hanzo asked and lowered the ash shovel still further, though he held onto it in case this was some sort of fiendish trap of an unexpected nature.

 

“....Oh. Oh, crap. I didn’t think what it’d look like -- just a second.” She reached up and undid the straps wrapped under her chin and over her mouth and lifted the whole horrifically misshapen contraption off her head, her hair tumbling out of it in a mass of greasy tangles. A significant quantity of grease also adhered to her cheeks, her forehead, and around her eyes, giving her the aspect of an adorably contrite racoon. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Forgiven.” Hanzo sighed and replaced the ash shovel in the rack next to the fireplace. “And I’m sorry, too. What  _ is _ that thing?”

 

“It’s okay. I  _ did _ sort of sneak up on you unawares. And they’re aetheric perception goggles.” Hana replied and handed the object to him which did, legitimately, appear to be a set of goggles made up of a half-dozen overlapping lenses inscribed around the edges and across some of the surfaces with arcane markings, mounted in a durable setting of similarly inscribed metal and leather on what was clearly intended to be an adjustable-to-size head covering. He could see no pragmatic use for the amount of lubricant slathered across the various interior and exterior surfaces, but he assumed it had some purpose existing outside his spotty and incomplete knowledge of esoteric and possibly magical engineering.

 

“It lets you see...spirits? Spiritual energies?” He handed it back.

 

“According to Jamie, both.” And, so saying, she plopped it back in place, redid the straps, and adjusted the lenses slightly. “Admittedly, I haven’t actually seen any spirits yet, which is allegedly a good sign, because it means that nothing that isn’t supposed to be here is wandering through the border wards at will which means that the fixes they made earlier are  _ probably _ working. But, just in case, Jamie’s also planting some variable phase localized aetheric field generators around the cabin and the hacienda since that’s where we’re all going to be staying tonight.” 

 

“Some who the what now?” Hanzo asked and settled down on the edge of the bed to check on his ranger, who still hadn’t stirred.

 

“They look like those little solar-powered garden stake lights but, uhm, they’re not? Well, okay, they might be technically solar-powered -- we were charging them all day in the garden of that one abandoned house near the hacienda. The way I understand it is the produce a sort of spirit-repellent field. Mostly they use it to keep places temporarily safe from intrusion and they’re pretty sure it’ll at least help block anything if the Serpent-Wolf tries to get at you again.” A pause. “Honestly, a  _ lot _ of this still sounds like the magical version of Star Trek technobabble, I mean I keep waiting for him to suggest bouncing a graviton beam off the main deflector dish, but it also kinda makes  _ sense? _ I mean, there  _ are _ some rules here, apparently. I just have to figure them out. And speaking of figuring things out,  _ wow _ , you look like  _ three thousand percent _ better? All the stuff inside you that was loose or frayed or broken is almost totally back together again. Ooooh, I wonder if you put this on and looked at yourself in the mirror if you could see it?”

 

“Maybe later.” Hanzo looked up and smiled wryly. “Can you see Ranger McCree, as well?”

 

“Yeah. He...looks kinda beat, actually? Drained almost?” Hana reached up and flipped the actual goggle parts of the headgear up and latched them in place on her forehead. “I understand things got a little hairy last night.”

 

“Yes, they did. And he didn’t get all the rest he needed then, or for most of the day today.” He rose and pulled the blankets higher, tucked them into place around his ranger’s body. “We should let him sleep.”

 

“Not even going to argue. We brought some dinner, if you’re hungry?” She held the door open for him and he closed it gently behind them, consulting the relevant parts of his anatomy and finding them entirely open to the idea of eating.

 

Terrifying Smoke Gabe was already at work in the kitchen and handed him one of the ranger’s heavy ceramic plates loaded down with grilled chicken and rice, a ramekin of pickled vegetables, and an enormous serving of corn cake oozing with melted butter and honey. “Jess still asleep?”

 

“At the moment, yes.” Hanzo settled down on one of the prep island stools and accepted the silverware Hana handed to him. “We barely made it back here before he went down. Genji told you?”

 

“He did.” Gabe tilted his head and regarded him steadily for a moment through four pairs of coolly glowing crimson eyes. “Thank you for looking after him. I was sure he wasn’t right when he left the house but…” He trailed off and glanced down the hall. “Ana said it might have been a side effect of shaking off the medicine so early.”

 

“He didn’t seem entirely himself when I found him.” Hanzo admitted carefully, intensely aware of Hana pouring herself a glass of lemonade at the other end of the kitchen. 

 

“I’m going to check on him if you two don’t mind.” And, so saying and without waiting for their reply, he disappeared down the hall and into the bedroom.

 

“ _ Come with me. _ ” Hana dragged him away from the prep island, only barely granting him time to gather up his plate, and into the living room. “I thought he was going to watch you eat every bite. Sit down for a second, have I got something to show you…”

 

Both their bags were stacked side-by-side on the coffee table and, to his surprise, Hana began rooting around in his bag, drawing out his tablet and pushing it toward him. “I sent you the links in an email but, well, while you guys were out this afternoon and I was babysitting solar stakes, I started poking around to see what I could see about this place and --” She paused, listened intensely for a moment, continued. “The people. Because I’m nosy like that and I’d rather not be axe murdered and buried in a shallow grave in the desert in the event of a sudden but inevitable betrayal.”

 

“ _ Really _ , Hana?” Hanzo asked, exasperated, but thumbed open the screen. “They’ve been nothing but --”

 

Staring up at him was a grainy photograph, obviously a still lifted from the camera roll of a news drone suffering from substandard imaging equipment, of a much, much younger Jesse McCree, strapped to a hover-gurney and surrounded by EMTs under the headline  **_MASSACRE IN DEADLOCK GORGE_ ** which Hana had helpfully saved as the device’s wallpaper.

 

“...Oh.” Hanzo said and had, at that moment, absolutely no idea what else to say.

 

“You are going to want to read that.” Hana’s expression was uncharacteristically sober. “It’s a ten-year retrospective on...whatever it was that went down, it not entirely clear even ten years later, but I think it can be accurately assessed as  _ some serious shit. _ ”

 

“I will do that.” He hurriedly opened his email app before anyone could come in behind him and look over his shoulder . “What even made you --”

 

“Like I said, better slightly paranoid and prepared than hacked into undergraduate bits and stuffed in an abandoned mineshaft.” Hana replied. “And you better check your email because  _ my _ professors have everything rescheduled already. Oh, and speaking of professors? Your boyfriend occasionally guest lectures at UNM and he’s a  _ doctoral candidate _ in cultural anthropology with a specialist concentration in folklore. Jamie gave me that one.”

 

“Jamie.” He tried to place a face with the name but couldn’t quite do as, with with slowly dawning horror, he watched the number of messages tagged with bright red exclamation points proliferate in a manner not unlike hormonal rodents in the spring.

 

“The tall one? Aussie, looks like his hair’s on fire, likes to claim that the layer of grease is actually a protective unguent that drives off demons?” She plopped down next to him and stole bites from his plate while he sorted messages. “He and Roadie are staying here tonight, too. Outside. In Matilda.”

 

Hanzo looked up from a frankly alarming email that suggested his thesis advisor intended to call on him at home in the next day or two, delivered that morning. “Matilda?”

 

“He also likes to claim that’s an acronym but, frankly, I think he’s kinda full of it.” Hana swallowed a stolen mouthful and gestured toward the front windows. “It’s a mobile supernatural entity self-defense shelter and while I’m sure all the letters for MATILDA are in that collection of words...” She shrugged eloquently. “He seems to think that this is the perfect opportunity for a field test.”

 

Hanzo stood up, crossed to the windows, and peered out. Parked in the middle of the street, clearly illuminated by the porch light, was the result of a mescaline-fueled liaison between a cigar tube, a 50s-style sci fi flick UFO, and a classic Winnebago, boxy in a vaguely organically rounded sort of way, at least two storeys tall, and chrome plated right down to the awnings jutting off the back and side, over the disgorged boarding platform and the pair of nylon camp chairs planted next to it. One of them was occupied by a giant shadow, as wide across the shoulders as he was tall, and which raised a hand that could use a hollowed out half of a watermelon as a shotglass and offered a friendly wave. Hanzo waved back and let the curtains fall shut, acknowledging at least to himself that that wasn’t even the strangest thing he’d seen that day. “...Do you think that’s going to work?”

 

“The goggles do!” Hana replied cheerfully. “Speaking of which, do you mind if I hit the shower first? I really need to get this crap out of my hair before it solidifies.”

 

“Go. Use the ranger’s shampoo. It’s wonderful.” He followed her as far as the linen cabinet, the better to fetch her a fresh pillow.

 

“You’re the best.” She tossed her overnight bag into the bathroom and paused at the door. “Don’t think I didn’t notice, Hanzo.”

 

“Notice what?” He asked, sensing a trap.

 

“That you didn’t argue when I called him your boyfriend.  _ I’m so proud of you. _ ” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and slammed the bathroom door in his face before he could either resist or argue the point.

 

Hanzo stood for a moment, staring at the closed bathroom door, hand resting on his cheek, an expression of half-crazed emotion slowly growing across his face that he knew in his bones would result in any normal human backing slowly away from him while looking desperately around for something to use as a weapon. Even a few days ago, it would have made  _ him _ back slowly away looking for a weapon. Now, it felt reasonably natural even as his assorted inner voices of reason and if not madness at least something close to it argued in the back of his mind at nearly-audible-to-others volume and he drifted down the hall in the direction of the ranger’s bedroom door.

 

_ Your mate. _ The words cycled through his mind, spoken in the not-ranger’s raspy drawl, and there was nothing in him that could even pretend to deny it, not reason and not something much nearer to madness.  _ Your mate. _ Just thinking those words made strange things happen inside his chest, painful, wonderful things that made him want to kick the bedroom door open, shake his ranger awake, and demand to know what he thought, what he felt, what he wanted.

 

Instead, he stopped just outside, hand poised to knock and held by the sound of Terrifying Smoke Gabe’s voice, quiet and low and oh so very gentle, and then the ranger’s, softer and deeper and something in it tightened his throat and made his eyes sting, even though he couldn’t quite understand the actual words they were speaking. The intimacy of it, perhaps, the sort of closeness that came of two people who knew and loved one another well, who knew that there were no words that they could not speak, no comfort that they could not ask. And he could not bring himself to intrude on that, no matter how fiercely he desired words and comfort of his own. 

 

He stepped away and padded softly back down the hall, retrieving another blanket for Hana, and made up her bed on the world’s most comfortable couch. It seemed the best use of his time and another good use came to him as voices drifted in from outside and he became aware of the flicker of firelight through the curtains. He poked his head out the door and found both the nylon camp chairs now occupied, the extinct gourd firepit relocated to the road next to MATILDA, casting its light over one man so enormously tall and lanky the only possible explanation for it was a tragic accident involving an industrial taffy puller and another who was very simply a mountain given human form, wearing what looked like a heavily modified antique gas mask. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

 

“‘Ello, mate!” The victim of cruel and unusual taffy pulling grinned cheerfully at him, smile wide and bright and slightly snaggletoothed, in a face that did in fact appear to be covered in some form of deliberately applied soot/grease combination. “Yer lookin’ a fair sight better than you were the last time we saw ya. How goes?”

 

“I’ve been worse.” Hanzo admitted, and opened the door enough to step out onto the porch. “Can I get you anything? Blankets? Something to drink, or eat?”

 

“We’ve got alla that squared away in MATILDA here but I think I speak for both of us when I say a nice warm cuppa would be welcome. Right, Roadie?” Jamie -- it had to be Jamie -- cast a sidelong look at the mountain, who nodded mountainously in response. “Tea, if we could? Jess usually has some in his pantry. And thank ya kindly for the offer.”

 

“Of course. You are entirely welcome.”

 

A brief perusal of the ranger’s cabinets yielded both a proper teapot -- heavy earthenware to hold the heat -- and, to his vast amusement, a selection of knitted tea cozies to go around it, with its own inset metal strainer. A second provided mugs, likewise earthenware, and large enough to serve even the giants outside. He found a pleasantly fragrant canister of loose-leaf tea blended through with herbs and bits of dried orange peel and flower blossoms labeled FOR JAMIE in the pantry. While the tea was steeping he put together a selection of additives -- sugar, a jar of honey, lemon slices, a creamer for the milk, a plate of iced biscuits. Hana drifted through the kitchen during the course of his preparations and he poured her a cup and adulterated it to her preferences, delivering it to her nest of blankets before carrying the rest outside. 

 

“Ahhhh, yer a scholar and a gentleman.” Jamie sighed as Hanzo set the tea caddy down on the somewhat rickety camp table that had materialized between the chairs. “Join us?”

 

“I believe I will.” Hanzo ducked inside just long enough to retrieve his jacket, a mug, and his tablet and, by the time he returned, a third chair had appeared beside the firepit.

 

Jamie poured for him as he settled down and for a moment they sat in companionable silence while they passed honey and lemon wedges, stirred and sipped. 

 

“I gotta admit, I’m glad we’re having a chance for a sit-down -- I was a little worried about alla ya after everything that happened t’other night.” Jamie set his cup down and leaned over to scrutinize him in the firelight. “Jess was all kinds of worried and he doesn’t worry easy.”

 

“I’m grateful for all of your help.” Hanzo replied, honestly. “And also sorry that I dragged you all into this.”

 

“Nah, nothing t’be sorry for, mate. We’re all in this t’gether and we take care of our own out here.” Jamie reached out and patted him companionably on the shoulder.

 

“If it is not too intrusive a question, how did you meet him? Ranger McCree?” Hanzo asked.

 

“That’s not too much t’ask at all. In fact, it’s quite the story, innit, Roadie?” Jamie grinned across the fire at his companion, who made a sound not entirely like a concordant avalanche sliding down a slope of general agreement in response. “We moved here...oh, almost eight years ago now -- climate here is better for Roadie’s health, his lungs’re bad, need the drier, cleaner air -- but before we did we went scopin’ about for properties in the area where we could set up a workshop and junkyard and a house and suchlike all right and close t’gether. Found a place almost straightaway that’d suit just up the road from here, solid in the middle of nowhere, dirt cheap -- bein’ auctioned off for back taxes according to the real estate website. Didn’t realize until we got here that was a load’a hooey because all the properties south of the Red Line had their property tax liens vacated years ago but, well, we were  _ here _ and we’d taken possession.”

 

“Things were weird almost from the start.” Roadie rumbled seismically, an effort at speech that seemed to extract a tremendous cost from him -- he adjusted the filters on his mask and inhaled deeply several times.

 

“Yeah, yeah it was. Noises in the night -- right up close to the house, so that we were worried to go outside much after dark, sometimes during the day while we were cleaning out the mess left in the salvage yard.” Jamie sipped his tea again. “It got so bad we took to barricading the doors and boarding up the windows from the inside ‘cause we were sure there was a whole pack of coyotes out there itchin’ to gnaw our bones.”

 

All the hairs on the back of Hanzo’s scalp stood up and saluted simultaneously. “ _ Naayéé _ .”

 

“Ayep. A whole bunch of ‘em. We had no idea, of course, nor what t’do or where t’go for help but one day while I was pickin’ up supplies I mentioned in passin’ to the shopkeep what was going on and she gave me his card.” A little grin. “I remember thinkin’  _ what good is this gonna do _ and then I called him and, well, you know how it is, when he talks t’you and it’s like how it’s from his lips to God’s ear and nothing ever is going to go or be wrong again and then he comes and kicks everything’s ass and makes you breakfast in the morning?”

 

“Intimately.” Hanzo replied, dryly.

 

“So, yeah, he came and sorted our problem in a trice and then called Rein over and introduced us and we got the whole place properly secured and I started studyin’ with him in the craft and here we are.” He sighed. “Best years of our lives, mate. Good place and better people.”

 

Hanzo smiled at the surface of his tea. “I’m inclined to agree.”

 

The silence lapsed into companionable again. Hanzo turned his attention, reluctantly, to the massive backlog of email he had accumulated, disposing of the most pressing items, adjusting his calendar for the next weeks in accord with the updated post-crisis class schedule, and responding to Dr. Saddind-Maas’ assorted missives, entreating her forcefully not to go anywhere near the condo since he wasn’t home and wouldn’t be until Tuesday morning at the earliest. Then he called her cell and left a message on her voicemail reiterating that information and suggesting they meet instead at her office at some point in the next week. Then he penciled himself in on her open access meeting schedule to further underscore the point. It was, ultimately, all he could do.

Toshokan-in had not yet replied to his query of the family genealogical databases or the historical archive, a fact he found somewhere in the precise junction between irritating and mildly alarming. Of course, it was already a business day in Japan and, if system maintenance ran late, it was entirely likely his admittedly non-emergency task had been shunted into the lowest possible priority queue. He summoned all his patience, resisted the urge to query her again, and turned his attention to the last thing he wished to deal with.

 

The link Hana sent him contained a brief precis of the article in question. It was, as Hana said, a ten year retrospective on events that had occurred in a place called Deadlock Gorge, written by a local true crime author who had spent years of her life researching both the circumstances of the “massacre” and the history of the location. Hana’s notes suggested that he read it in stages because some of the crime scene photos were a lot. Hanzo, staring down at the picture of Jesse -- pale, unconscious, strapped to a gurney beneath a mass of medical tubing and oxygen delivery equipment -- had absolutely no desire to read it at all. Hana had saved the picture to the tablet’s gallery and he pulled it up, almost against his will, fiddled with the resolution until it was almost uncomfortably sharp.

 

Jesse looked awful, unnaturally pale and drawn, eyes sunken deep in their sockets, so much so it was impossible to tell if he was awake or unconscious. His cheekbones, collarbones, the visible bits of his arms and hands, were all too sharply drawn, flesh and skin drawn tight, wasted, almost starved. His wrists were ringed in dark splotches that could be nothing but bruises, and he was entirely sure the stains welling up through the blankets covering his chest and abdomen were blood. The expression graven on his face was one of utter desolation.

 

He wished, with a fierce desire, for the power to reach through that image and comfort the child he had been all those years ago, to somehow let him know that he would be safe and well again. To go inside and offer that same comfort to the man he was now.

 

“Gentlemen, thank you for your company tonight.” Hanzo rose and offered a proper bow before he could think of a reason to stop himself. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

 

“Nah, we’re all right. Leave the tea things, we’ll take care of the clean up -- MATILDA’s got a kitchenette that needs testin’. If you hear screams, don’t be too worried.” Jamie grinned and waved him off.

 

“I will try not to be.” Hanzo replied wryly. “Good night.”

 

Most of the lights were already out as he stepped inside -- a little LED lamp came on in the entranceway as it registered his existence and amidst the burrito-shaped roll of blankets on the couch he caught a glimpse of artificial light from one of Hana’s devices. He paused at her side for a moment and found her deeply asleep, earbuds in place and snoring softly and, as he straightened up, he managed not to scream like a twelve year old when the dim and flaring light from the fire caught on the rapidly moving knitting needles of the man-shaped shadow sitting next to it. 

 

Terrifying Smoke Gabe regarded him with unconcealed amusement as he controlled the urge to leap backwards and start throwing things in self-defense. “Keep your skin on, kid. I told you we’d talk more later -- it’s later and it’s even technically still today for a little longer. Have a seat.”

 

There was, in fact, another chair next to the fire, facing his own a safe double arm length away and with baskets full of firewood and neatly bound skeins of wool between them to act as an at least a theoretical buffer. Hanzo settled down and found it comfortably cushioned, draped with a blanket, pleasantly warmed and perfumed with the incense-rich smoke. He glanced at Hana, sleeping a bare handful of feet away.

 

A low chuckle. “Don’t worry -- she’s down for the count. I made sure of that and, wow, that sounded terrible. Not in a bad way, but she needed the rest and she was fighting it for some reason.”

 

“I suspect that this has been more difficult for her than she’s let on.” Hanzo admitted and resisted the urge to fetch her another pillow. “She’s…”

 

“Very structural-rationalist. Yeah, I know. Got a mind like a steel trap. Doesn’t believe more than half of what’s she’s seeing around here at any given time, and that’s got to be rough, not being able to trust the evidence of your own eyes.” The shadows shimmered gently and collapsed in on themselves and abruptly became more than just man-shaped, Terrifying Smoke Gabe more human than Hanzo had ever seen him before, one pair of nearly black eyes under heavy brows, a strong nose and high cheeks and a full mouth framed in a beard sharing some common stylistic antecedents with Jesse’s own, fine scars on dark skin. “But, honestly, I’m not here to talk about Hana. I’d rather know what’s eating  _ you. _ ”

 

“I --” Hanzo stopped, considered, started again. “I am as well as can be expected. I --”

 

“Kid, don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter.” Terrifying no longer smoky Gabe snorted. “For one thing, I spent literal decades of my life lying professionally to people who’d do worse than kill me if they caught me. For another, you’re awful at it.”

 

“What if it was telling the truth?” Hanzo whispered, before he could think of a reason not to say it. “What if I  _ am _ its bondmate? What if this is what Minamikaze saw inside me and that’s why he cut away my gift? Because me saw me becoming something terrible if I was permitted to keep it?”

 

Silence prevailed in the wake of that, and Hanzo buried his head in his hands and concentrated on his breathing and convincing his heart to crawl back out of his duodenum. At a distance, from around the sound of blood panicking in his ears, he heard footsteps crossing the room once, twice, and then a hand came to rest on his shoulder. He looked up and found Gabe holding out a tall glass of something glacially pale. “Drink that. You’ll feel a little better.”

 

Hanzo accepted it gingerly. “What is it?”

 

“Lemonade.” A little smile curled the scarred corner of his mouth as he sat down and placed the pitcher down on the mosaicked fireplace curb. “Drink.”

 

He sipped, and it was cool and sweet-tart and refreshingly herbaceous and, perversely, it did make him feel a little better. “What’s -- this isn’t just --”

 

“Lavender essence and certain other helpful healing additives. Gives it a little more kick.” Gabe picked up his knitting needles again, a length of something electric pink and powder blue and creamy white already hanging off them. “Let’s do a little thought experiment, shall we?”

 

Hanzo sipped again, let the cold trickle down his throat, and nodded.

 

“You said that, when you were traveling through the forest, you saw the remains of others who had come before you -- who had grown tired, or lost, or just wandered off the path and died there, never having reached their goal.” The needles flashed in the firelight and Hanzo found himself watching them, their motion weirdly soothing, nearly hypnotic.

 

“Yes, that is true.” He replied, after a moment, not quite wanting to touch those memories, not quite needing to as the images flashed across the inside of his eyes whether he wanted them or not.

 

“You also said, when you were climbing the mountain, that you sensed others had reached that high only to be flung away into nothingness when they failed to meet the challenges it offered.” The needles flickered and in their reflected light he saw again the lightning leaping from cloud to cloud, felt the cold biting into his flesh, and shivered convulsively.

 

“That is also true.” He admitted, and finished his drink, set aside the glass before his shaking hands could drop it.

 

“And then you came to the palace, and refused all the temptations, and brought your granddragon the proof of all that he demanded…” Gently. “What makes you think he’s done making demands? Or setting tests?”

 

“What do you mean?” Hanzo asked tightly. “He -- he accepted that the task was  _ done. _ That the clan had redeemed itself. That I -- that I was -- that I am not --”

 

“Not a dragon.” Even more gently. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think you’re still  _ something. _ Do you really think, if he’d seen the day coming when you’d become one with that thing, that he’d  _ only _ cut out your gift? When he left the bones of the unworthy before you strewed all over the foot of his mountain? When there was chance that you’d become something horrible and predatory and that you could come home bearing it? Why would he let anything of you come back if that was the case -- if he could end the threat you’d become right then and there?” Yet more gently still. “What if you’re still being tested, Hanzo?”

 

“ _ Why? _ ” His eyes prickled and he clenched them shut, not wanting to cry before that man, not more than he had already. “For  _ what? _ ”

 

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” A fire-cast shadow detached itself from the mass dancing across the floor between them, lifted the pitcher, and poured him another glass of lemonade. “At the risk of sounding profoundly cheesy, that’s something your heart needs to tell you. Maybe even literally, given what Ana and Dr. Tekhartha found inside you.”

 

Hanzo’s hand drifted to his chest. “You sound...sure.”

“Sure is a relative term. Let’s just say...I’ve seen similar. Similar enough to make me think there’s more going on here than we know just yet.” His eyes narrowed and went slightly redder. “Drink your lemonade.”

 

He picked up the glass and sipped obediently. “I...have not told anyone else this yet. I have been having...dreams. Nearly visions. The ranger -- Jesse -- is in them but he is not himself. The first one happened after he drove the Serpent-Wolf out of my body.” He closed his eyes, called back all the details he could remember, recited them. “At the foot of the mountain I found him -- he had golden eyes and claws but Jesse’s face. I have seen him since then, and every time I have, he has called me his cousin.”

 

Gabe was silent for several moments. Then: “Mą’ii.” A pause. “Coyote. I’ve...seen him, too, wearing another face. And his cousin? That’s interesting.  _ Very _ interesting.” His eyes narrowed and visibly brightened, like embers blown back to life. “Coyote’s cousin is Great Wolf, a powerful protector of humans and beasts, spirits and gods, of the world itself.”

 

“A  _ protector? _ ” The bitterness was so thick in his own voice he could nearly taste it. “I’m not a protector -- I can’t even defend myself.”

 

“Not yet. But you will.” Another set of eyes blossomed, glittering redly. “You’re judging yourself too harshly, like another young man of my acquaintance.”

 

“Jesse.” His own gaze flicked involuntarily in the direction of the ranger’s bedroom. “I --”

 

“You know. He told me.” Calm and even, and the edge of sorrow in it snapped Hanzo’s attention back to him at once and his grief was etched in lines of firelight and shadow on the planes of his face. “For the record? You’re not the first to find out and run. You  _ are _ the first to turn around and come back, which gives you a significant leg up, as far as I’m concerned.”

 

Hanzo released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “If I could take anything of the last days back -- anything at all -- the running would be it.”

 

“Which recommends you even more, considering the circumstances.” The corner of his mouth twitched back again, not quite a smile. “This is going to sound like post facto justification but...we did the best we could. We all did. But we never had the luxury of comforting lies where he was concerned -- not as powerful, as dangerous, as he was, and so young. So we told him the truth and taught him control and tried our best to impress on him that human is as human does, and that he didn’t have to be a monster if he didn’t want to be one. The difference between monsters and men and gods is so...thin around here, anyway, as thin as the borders between worlds. And for fourteen years he believed us.” All of his eyes flicked closed at once. “Since then...well. Not so much.”

 

Hanzo, greatly daring and risking a horrible knit-purl accident, rose and touched his hand gently. “He loves you, that much I know, from how he speaks of you.”

 

The corners of Gabe’s mouth twitched again and his eyes opened, glittering. “The thing is, I don’t doubt that at all. He’s never blamed Jack or I for anything, and I sometimes wish he would, because that would at least mean he’s not entirely blaming himself. But he hasn’t, and he does, and he’s gotten his heart broken enough times that he’s afraid to risk the pieces.” All those eyes locked on his own. “I’ve waited for someone like you for  _ decades _ .”

 

“And now I’m here and I won’t go again.” He felt the resolution settle into place as he spoke the words, felt it thrum his nerves and ring in his heart and knew it for truth. “I give my word, to you and to him.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that.” Gabe finally looked away, and at least half his mouth managed to smile. “Get some rest, kid. It’s tomorrow already.”

 

“I believe that I shall.” He finished the last of his drink and carried what was left back into the kitchen with him, paid court to the shower, and slipped into the ranger’s bedroom.

 

His father had, at least, managed to get him out of his day clothing and into actual pyjamas: an impossibly faded tee-shirt and a pair of red flannel pants covered in little yellow rubber ducks and Hanzo only barely kept his squealing down out of dog-annoying frequencies. As it was, Binky lifted his head from where he lay stretched in front of the fireplace and gave him a deeply reproachful look.

 

“My apologies,” Hanzo whispered, and dispensed a thorough belly-rub in recompense. “Thank you for standing watch, my friend.”

 

Binky  _ whuffed _ quietly and kissed his forehead and he turned to his own bag, retrieving his nightclothes and a fresh pair of socks, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed to dress himself. Behind him Jesse, no longer on the edge of the bed himself but spread out in the middle, half-covered and half-not, stirred at the shift of the mattress, half opened his eyes. Hanzo reached out and stroked his leg gently. “Easy, beloved. It’s only me.”

 

He blinked several times, eyes true black in the dim light of the half-dead fire, and let his head fall back into the nest of pillows. Moving with care, Hanzo scooted up next to him, easing the covers more fully over them both, resting for a moment on his side, tracing the ranger’s resting face with his eyes, one hand spread wide on his chest.

 

“I am falling in love with you.” He finally whispered, and rested his head on Jesse’s shoulder.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the length of time between updates: several things, including real life, more paying commissions, a death in the family, and a sudden punch to the throat in the form of writer's block slowed me down considerably. Nonetheless, I have returned, and with this chapter we enter Act Three of our little supernatural drama.
> 
> Content warnings for: mild gore, implications of horrifying horribleness.

_ Calling it a cave was lending it a dignity it absolutely did not deserve but the alternative -- a crack, barely deep enough to hold both him and the little pack he carried simultaneously -- was the sort of defeatist thinking that Pop Pop Nate would have frowned upon pretty strenuously. It was, however, not really a cave and, as far as shelters went, it left plenty of things to be desired: it wasn’t big enough to stand up in and so he had to shove his pack in first and then crawl in after it, scrambling all the way across an unevenly angled floor covered in sand and sharp bits of stone that were destined to become lodged in places nobody ever wanted to have a pointy rock poking them. On the plus side, with the sun almost down, the entrance was already fully in shadow and it was only dumb luck that he’d spotted it himself, mostly concealed as it was behind a mass of tangled half-grown mesquite poking up through a drift of scree that might rattle as he walked on it but wouldn’t take a print no matter how heavy footed he was scrambling up. It was even a little bit warmer inside than out, the rising wind hissing through the mesquite branches but breaking around the entrance to his hidey hole so that only the barest lick of it reached him, tasting like snow, like ice.  _

 

_ NWS had been forecasting the possibility when he left the cabin and he didn’t quite dare bring out his little handheld to check the current weather, in case his pursuer had some means of tracking him that partook of triangulating comm signals, which was not beyond the bounds of reality. He likewise didn’t yet dare to bring out the package of nutrient-dense snack bars he’d stashed in his pack before leaving or wiggle the survival blanket out of the first aid kit, because opening up either one would make noise that could carry for miles and he had no practical idea how close or far away his pursuer might be. He’d lost sight of him once he’d scrambled down off the ridgeline himself and into the maze of defiles marking the edge of the valley, looking for someplace to take cover as darkness approached and the temperature dropped and the skies slowly clouded over. The last glimpse he’d had was Marcus silhouetted against the sky, rifle not quite leveled, as he’d scrambled behind a screen of brush and jumbled stone, the best part of an hour ago. _

 

_ In the best part of another hour, it would be fully dark and then he would have a choice to make: hunker down in this little hole for the night and hope he didn’t freeze, even with the survival blanket, because he didn’t dare start a fire, or try to make his way back home under cover of night and hope that he didn’t leave a trail clear enough to follow back to his own doorstep or break an ankle in the dark or be caught out in the open with nowhere to run or hide. A thread of cold air found its way down his back, sliding over the collar of his jacket, and he tucked his legs closer to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, admitted that none of his choices were good. _

 

_ From above, a loose stone clattered down the face of the rise to land somewhere to the right of his little hole. He clapped his hands over his mouth to keep the fear-driven sound he felt crawling up his throat from escaping, along with his adrenaline-spiked heart, ricocheting around inside his ribcage as though it intended to flee completely independent of the rest of him. _

 

**_Calm down. Calm down. It’s just a coyote out hunting or a squirrel headed back to its den._ ** _ He forced himself to lower his hands, to breathe slowly, evenly, in through the nose, out through the mouth, to minimize the sound of it.  _ **_Calm down calm down calm_ **

 

_ “I know you’re here, Jesse.” Marcus Whitehawk’s voice drifted down from above.  _

 

_ Jesse’s hands found their way back over his mouth again. _

 

_ “I know you can hear me.” Another rock, and then a few more, a steady trickle of sand, and now he could hear the scrape of hard boot soles against stone. “Come out now, stop running, and I’ll make it quick.” _

 

**_Calm down calm down calm down._ ** _ It was all he could do to not let the panic trying to claw its way out of his chest take over the pace of his breathing, permit little noises of distress to pass his lips.  _ **_He can’t see you, he doesn’t know where you are, if he did he wouldn’t be trying to flush you, calm down._ **

 

_ “I’ll find you, one way or another.” The footsteps and the regular tumble of stone came to a halt. “Hard and slow or fast and painless, the choice is yours, Jesse.” _

 

_ He buried his face in his knees, squeezed his eyes closed on the tears trying to well up, shook silently. After a moment, the footsteps continued on. _

 

**_Can’t stay here._ ** _ The thought crawled out of the panicked circles his brain was running in, the first coherent one in the minutes after.  _ **_He’s going to circle down this way eventually, and when he does, he’ll --_ ** _ He took a ragged, desperate breath, too loud.  _ **_Wait till it’s a little more dark._ **

 

_ He inched closer to the entrance of his hiding place, and watched as the sky faded from dusky gold to vivid crimson-purple to the deep lingering blue of winter twilight, just enough light left to see the floor of the valley, still some distance below his own perch, enough to let him make his way down with only a little risk of falling or setting off an avalanche of scree himself. If he left. Right now.  _

 

_ It took him an unpardonably long time to actually reach back and gather up his pack, to ease himself out of the hidey hole legs first, crawl along under the mesquite bushes with excruciating slowness to avoid knocking any rocks askew -- well, okay, not  _ **_too_ ** _ many rocks, because it was impossible to avoid at all and definitely harder in the near-dark. He kept himself tucked low to the ground once he passed beyond their dubious shelter, making himself as small as he could, just a part of the background clutter, the flesh between his shoulder blades crawling furiously with every step he took in the open.  _

 

**_Just keep going -- get to the valley floor and it’ll be easier to move, easier to run, you can take the long way around to the cabin and he might not even --_ **

 

_ He heard the shot before he felt it -- a single sharp report, its echoes bouncing off a thousand surfaces -- and then he was falling, knocked off his feet, bouncing off loose masses of stone and stunted shrubs, coming to rest flat on his back at the base of the rise. His pack came off somewhere above, and he’d left most of his breath behind on the ride down, and his lungs seemed deeply disinclined to help catch it back, full of something too thick to inhale around. He coughed hard, spat blood, and the pain lanced through his chest at last, finding its way around shock, and his head spun, hot and throbbing. He should, he knew, try to get up, try to run, try to do something, anything, but he couldn’t  _ **_breathe_ ** _. _

 

_ From an impossibly vast distance, he heard someone sliding down the decline. It took all his strength to lift his head, to force his eyes to focus, Marcus striding toward him, and he felt it, felt it like he hadn’t in years, roaring up inside him with the blood bubbling in his throat, in his lungs, throbbing in his temples and in his gut: hunger. Hunger sharp and hard and hot, clawing at his insides, thrashing in his veins and flesh and soul. He dragged in a painful, rattling breath and croaked, “Stay...back. Please..stay…” _

 

_ He coughed again, and the taste of his own blood in his mouth, on his tongue, on his  _ **_teeth_ ** _ , made everything worse, sharper and harder and hotter, like throwing kerosene on a fire made of twisted metal and broken glass. It roared in him, that hunger, split his gums and the tips of his fingers, didn’t care that he had a monster-killing bullet in his chest, wanted to rip and rend and tear and  _ **_Marcus was not fucking stopping._ **

 

_ “Please,” It came out warped and twisted, around his new teeth and new tongue, the straining of his jaw, but if his not-cousin heard the difference he made no sign of it. “Stay --” _

 

_ “Don’t move.” A foot came down on his chest, pinned him back to the hardpack, sent a bolt of pain through him that, for an instant, briefly eclipsed all else. The cold barrel of the rifle rested against his forehead. “I told you. You shouldn’t have run.” _

 

**_Please_ ** _ , he wanted to say, but the pain tightening his chest, the blood boiling up his throat wouldn’t allow it.  _ **_Please get back, I don’t want_ **

 

_ He heard the rifle’s action work, heard the cartridge slide into place, heard the bolt click home. Smelled gun oil and powder and the blood pulsing in Marcus’ veins, the warmth of his flesh, the taste of his breath, and the hunger inside him rose up and  _ **_roared_ ** _. Distantly, he heard someone screaming. He thought, for a moment, before the world slid away into darkness, that it might be himself.  _

 

_ When Jesse opened his eyes, it was snowing. It was snowing and the wind was blowing hard out of the north and the icy kiss of it was scorching his face and hands, cutting through his wet clothing where it clung stickily to his body. His lashes clung together as he blinked, eyes blurry, spit thick, mouth tasting of iron and salt and something else he couldn’t quite identify. His eyes refused to blink clear and so he scrubbed at his face with the sleeve of his jacket, tacky-damp, and he finally recognized what he was tasting, the smell on the air that wasn’t snow. _

 

_ Blood. _

 

_ A lot of blood. In fact, he realized as his vision cleared and his head stopped revolving in slow, steady circles, that there wasn’t much left of Marcus but the muddy, slushy puddle a good bit of his blood had made. Jesse knelt at the edge of it, the knees of his jeans soaked through, sleeves of his jacket wet to the elbows, his hands still not quite right. A shred of flannel that had probably already been red poked out of the mess and there draped over one of the bigger rocks was a strip of skin with some lengths of long dark hair still attached and a couple little knobs of bone, meticulously scraped clean of flesh but too tough to bite through, scattered like dice on a kitchen table. He could feel the effort it had taken to do the scraping in the muscles of his jaw, in his teeth, and he curled around himself, wanted to be sick, wanted to heave up everything he’d just swallowed down, but his body absolutely refused to even consider the idea, smugly full and happy about it, lungs clear, pain gone. He squeezed his eyes closed and whispered prayers to every god and spirit and ancestor he could think of who might take the littlest trace of pity on him and make this not to have happened. When he opened them again, no god or spirit or ancestor had chosen to answer. _

 

**_Get up,_ ** _ a little voice that might have been sanity or might have been something else whispered in the back of his mind.  _ **_Get up you have to get up what if he wasn’t alone? What if there’s more of them out there and they find you here and they see this and_ **

 

_ He found he didn’t care at all that there might be more and that they might find him and that they might see what he’d done. What followed after would only be just. _

 

**_Get up,_ ** _ that little voice whispered again,  _ **_go home, go back to the cabin, wash off, burn the clothes, call Gabe and Jack, tell them_ **

 

_ And even the little voice flinched away from  _ **_that_ ** _. From  _ **_telling them_ ** _ that. That he’d  _ **_killed_ ** _ , that he’d  _ **_eaten_ ** _ , that he’d  _ **_failed_ ** _ them, that he’d  _ **_betrayed_ ** _ everything they’d ever taught him and every word he’d sworn to them and everything he’d promised he’d be and that he wouldn’t do. That thought, of how ashamed and disappointed they would be, was what brought him to his feet, finally put a churning twist in his gut. _

 

**_I can’t go back._ ** _ The thought made itself heard and he knew it was true. There was no way he could go back to that little cabin, that safe and comfortable place that his grandparents had made, not now, not like this, with the blood of an innocent man drying on under his nails and his stomach still full of his meat. He could never go there again, because he wasn’t the person he’d been when he left -- he was something less now, and worse, and he turned away and walked north into the desert, into the hills, the cutting cold of the wind biting nowhere deep enough. _

 

_ He walked for hours -- he had no idea how many, had no idea of how long any of what he’d done had taken, and found he didn’t care. The cold sank into him, and the dark, and he felt them only distantly, the snow freezing in his hair and the tears on his cheeks. He walked until the sky in the east grew slowly lighter, even behind the clouds, the dark fading from black to deepest blue and the sun finally rising sick and smeared and bloody on the horizon, casting deep shadows across the desert. _

 

_ At his feet, a canyon yawned -- if he’d gone a few more feet in the dark, he’d have walked off the edge without ever seeing it, and the smile that curled his mouth and split his lips was bitter. He came to that edge now and looked down, down the striated and rust-red walls to the bottom, still deep in shadow -- jagged shadows, sharp and gnashing, like the hungry jaws of a starving beast. _

 

_ It was, he thought, weary, sick, a long way down. Maybe long enough. He took a deep, searing cold breath, and turned. To the south, the wind was tearing the clouds apart, the last of the brightest stars just blinking out. He released his breath and let himself fall. _

 

*

 

Hanzo opened his eyes with his gut and chest and head still full of the swooping, sickening, plunging sensation of falling to the comforting sight of the ranger’s carved and brightly painted bedroom ceiling. The relief this occasioned persisted for the whole three seconds it took for him to register that he was, in fact, falling. He hit the ranger’s likewise wooden floor with a force only slightly blunted by his state of partial mummification in a mass of sheets and blankets and comforter, landing with a thud and a stream of Japanglish invective that would have done Genji proud as he cracked his elbow, his shoulder, and his head more or less in sequence. 

 

He lay there for a long moment afterwards, staring up at the dimly lit and now somewhat further away ceiling, lacking the energy or the ambition necessary to even consider moving. In the dark behind his eyes, he could still feel the sticky itch of blood drying on skin that wasn’t his own, the sick satisfaction of a belly full of something too awful to contemplate, and the echo, still ringing in his own bones, of finding the ground after a long fall. It occurred to him, as he lay there and the light coming through the seams in the shutters grew gradually brighter, that he hadn’t fallen off his side of the bed -- the kiva was on his side of the bed, and he was staring at the lowest part of the windows and the spot the ranger’s boots still occupied and chair that he couldn’t remember seeing before.  _ He had rolled off the ranger’s side of the bed _ , and he hauled himself up with a groan and a few more enthusiastic Genjiisms to find that said bed was, in fact, empty of its other occupant, and most of the bedclothes were wrapped around him and the sheer intensity of the  _ panic _ that galloped through him at that realization was the sort of thing that the better class of neo-country-western singers wrote lugubrious ballads about. He could practically hear the chorus as he extricated himself from the tangle of both the top and bottom sheets:  _ my ranger’s gone, he’s run away, I can’t find him, night or day, I love him so, I want him back, something something probably involving a trusty pickup or possibly a dog named Blue. _

 

The kitchen was empty: no dishes in the sink or in the dish drainer, no coffee in the coffee pot, the kettle cold. Even worse: nobody in the sitting room. The blankets Hana used the night before were neatly folded on the couch, pillows piled on top. No enormous green dog occupied the floor in front of the fireplace, nor did anyone’s terrifying smoke Dad keep residence in any of the chairs along with an unknown but deeply disturbing number of half-finished and potentially non-Euclidian knitting projects. The space in front of the house, previously containing a tragic welding accident in the vague shape of a WinneUFO, was likewise void, though tire tracks in the dusty road suggested the direction of its coming and going. His own phone and tablet still sat on the coffee table, charge cords reading green, and he snatched the cell up, rewarded with actual bars of connection. He drifted back into the kitchen as he thumbed it open and speed-dialed Genji’s number.

 

“ _ Hey _ , Hanzo.” The voice that answered was not his brother’s but  _ Hana’s _ and his knees went stupidly weak enough with relief that he had to lean on the counter to stay upright. “Have a good night’s rest?”

 

“Where  _ are _ you?” He demanded by way of answer. “Where’s  _ everybody _ , Jesse wasn’t in bed when I woke up, what’s --”

 

“Easy, easy. Calm down. I left a note. Didn’t you see it?” She did not sound the slightest bit worried, or contrite, a fact he found rather significantly nettlesome.

 

“Hana.  _ Never _ , in the entire history of time, has telling someone to calm down  _ ever _ succeeded in calming them down.” Hanzo replied, tensely, scanning the counters, the prep island, the cupboards, and finally coming to rest on the refrigerator, where a magnetic note board hung in plain view bearing the words:  _ Went up to the hacienda for waffles. Join us when you wake up. We’ll save at least two pieces of bacon. H. _ “I see it now. Is Jesse with you?”

 

“No.” An expressive noise just slightly too feminine to be a genuine snort. “And between you and me I really doubt that Ranger McThoughtful would leave you by yourself after all the crap we’ve been through in the last seventy-two hours. Have you checked outside?”

 

“Not yet.” He peered out the kitchen window and found the junipers dancing gently in the breeze with a little dust devil, but no ranger in immediate view. “I just woke up a few minutes ago, I had a weird --”  _ dream not a dream that wasn’t a dream that was too real that was something that happened that happened to him _ “-- dream, I fell out of bed and that’s when I realized he was gone and --” Hana giggled. “What  _ exactly _ is so funny?”

 

“You.” Hana replied, amusement evident. “Seriously, take a breath. Have you looked --”

 

“Hanzo?” The voice came from behind and to the right, the corridor that led to the bedroom -- and also the bathroom. Where he had not, in fact, even thought to look. Because he was an  _ idiot. _

 

Hanzo turned and there he stood.

 

There he stood, with a deeply concerned look on his face, a little worry-mark engraved between his perfect brows, his beard obviously freshly trimmed and combed.

 

There he stood, with a towel draped around his shoulders, catching the drops of water dripping off his still-damp brown ringlets, runnels of which were still rolling down his chest, spangling the curls there like tiny, exquisite diamonds, trailing over the ridged muscles of his belly.

 

There he stood, with a second towel wrapped around his trim waist, knotted in place on one hip, the full length of one muscular thigh thus exposed, tawny skin gleaming wetly in the indirect light coming through the kitchen windows.

 

There he stood and were those fuzzy jackalope slippers? They were. Fuzzy jackalope slippers. Somehow that brought the entire look together.

 

Hanzo took a deep breath, said, “ _ Never mind, I found him _ ” and hung up. Before the call disconnected, he heard Hana cackling shamelessly. He was going to have to have a word with that woman.

 

“Hanzo.” The ranger --  _ oh for fuck’s sake, you’ve slept in the same bed with him TWICE now, just call him by his NAME _ \-- was looking at him now with open and serious alarm, as though he were afraid one wrong move would send him jumping out the kitchen window and he would have laughed it he weren’t fairly sure it would come out sounding half-crazed. “Are you okay, darlin’? You look a little --”

 

He crossed the room in three strides and, before he could let any of the million immediately occurring reasons not to do it avail themselves of control, threw his arms around him and clutched him tight, trying hard not to shake too obviously. For a second, the ranger stood absolutely stock startled still -- stiff, not knowing what to do with his hands, breath catching under his ear and heartbeat tripping noticeably higher -- and then the tension melted, arms closed around him in return, a hand coming to rest in the loose mess of hair at the back of his neck.

 

“Easy,” Jesse’s voice was a lower, rougher than usual. “It’s okay.  _ You’re _ okay.” A callused hand stroked his neck, the shorter hair on the back of his head. “What was it, darlin’? Bad dream?”

 

_ No. _ “Something like that.” He took a deep breath, filled his lungs and head with the scent of sage-cedar-spice, stronger even than usual, his own hand resting spread on Jesse’s back. Jesse’s mostly-bare, still a little wet back, firm muscle and mostly smooth, warm skin and all of the blood immediately tried to evacuate his head, a whole-body shiver running from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes.

 

“Must have been a  _ real _ bad one.” His ranger murmured against his ear, the hitch still in his breath, warm against his skin, and Hanzo was  _ intensely _ conscious of Jesse’s hand resting against the small of his back, still tangled in his hair. “You’re shakin’ all over. Maybe we should --”

 

“Jesse.” Hanzo’s gently questing hand came to rest on a not-smooth patch, smaller than he thought it would be, just under Jesse’s right shoulder blade. “I dreamt of  _ you. _ ”

 

“...Me?” And suddenly all his warm soothing calm was gone, every inch of his body tensing, including his voice. “What -- what did you --”

 

“I dreamt that you were afraid.” Hanzo said and found he didn’t quite have the courage necessary to turn and watch his face as he spoke -- especially since doing so meant stepping back, letting him go, even a little. “I dreamt you were running, hunted and afraid and alone.” He stopped, his mouth suddenly, painfully dry. “Hurt.”

 

Jesse’s skin pebbled with gooseflesh under his hands and now it was his turn to shiver.

 

“It wasn’t a dream, was it?” Hanzo whispered against his ranger’s neck. “It was real.”

 

Silence. Jesse’s hands slid out of his hair and the small of his back, came to rest on his hips, lightly, as though he were afraid to hold on too tightly. When he finally spoke, his voice was a toneless rasp. “Yes. It was -- that was real.” A ragged breath. “You...saw. What happened.”

“Yes.” Hanzo closed his arms tight, clung to his shoulders as he tried to pull away. “ _Jesse._ Stop. Please _._ _It wasn’t your fault!_ ”

 

He did, at least, stop trying to push him away, though he suspected it was more out of surprise than any real desire to do so. “Of  _ course _ it was my fault. I was scared and hurt and I  _ lost control _ and I --” His voice cracked, his grip tightened, almost painfully. “You saw what I did.”

 

“You  _ defended _ yourself. In the alternate reality where I live, when someone shoots you in the back from ambush?  _ It’s called attempted murder. _ ” Hanzo replied, fiercely, and now he did pull back, reached up and caught Jesse’s face in his hands -- his eyes were bright with unshed tears, the pain and grief and regret etched in every line. “You’re  _ allowed _ to not  _ let _ someone kill you, no matter how  _ justified _ they might think they are. Gods and dragons, Jesse, you were a  _ child _ \-- a child who just lost his  _ family _ \-- you didn’t  _ deserve _ that.”

 

“Neither did he.” Jesse took hold of his wrists and gently pulled his hands away, turned back toward the hallway, his shoulders hunched as though he were still expecting a blow.   

 

“Do you dream of that often?” Hanzo asked and Jesse froze in the door arch, his arms closing around himself.

 

“Not as often as I used to.” Roughly. “Let me get dressed and...we’ll talk.”

 

Hanzo stood unmoving in the middle of the kitchen, his heart thrumming like a struck harp string, peace as far from his breathing as it was physically possible to be, his thoughts chasing themselves in a series of concentric circles that started with  _ he thinks he deserved it HOW CAN HE THINK HE DESERVED IT _ and ended with  _ he was standing right in front of you in nothing but a towel YOU COULD HAVE WORKED WITH THAT YOU IDIOT. _ Finally, after a short eternity of internal gridlock, his quivering knees allowed him to move and his ropy leg muscles allowed him to walk and he leaned over the back of the world’s most comfortable couch, grabbed one of the pillows Hana had used the night before, and screamed into until he felt like he could face Jesse again without screaming considerably more. Then he went and fetched the tea canister labeled  _ To Enhance Calm _ , measured a potful into the strainer, and put the kettle on to boil, because there was little else he could do at that point except text-freak at Genji and that way lay madness. 

He was applying the not-quite-boiling water to the teapot when Jesse padded back out into the kitchen in his stocking feet, this time mostly dressed in NPS green-and-black,  hair combed back in a reasonable approximation of tamed, and all the blood that had nearly returned to the parts of his circulatory system that needed it most immediately abandoned duty again. Stupid sexy ranger. Stupid sexy ranger  _ uniforms. _

 

“Thank you, Hanzo.” His ranger replied with grave courtesy as Hanzo poured him a mug, filling the air with steam intensely perfumed in  _ desperately attempting to invoke serenity _ . 

 

“You’re welcome.” He poured his own tea and a few moments transpired silently in the passing and application of honey and lemon. “Hana and the others have gone to the hacienda for breakfast. We should  _ probably _ join them before they come looking for us.”

 

“We will. There’s just some things we need to talk over first.” Jesse, he could not help but notice, did not even pretend to drink. “I heard what you said last night. When you came to lay down.”

 

Hanzo froze with his teacup halfway to his mouth and, very carefully, set it back down before the sudden, violent contortions of his heart communicated themselves through his limbs and gave them both a sugary, tannic shower. “Oh.”

 

“Yeah.” It came out rough and he looked away and then back, the worry-mark between his brows taking up residence again. “Let’s...not do this right here?”

 

“Living room?” Hanzo suggested. “Next to the fireplace? I mean, there’s no fire but --” 

 

“That’s good.” The look that crossed his face could not be described as a smile by even the loosest definition of the term, but it wasn’t quite anything else, either, and his stomach decided that was all the encouragement it required to get into the sudden, violent contortions action. 

 

They took their tea and Hanzo the lead, inhaling peace and exhaling stress all the way, the chair he’d sat in the night before still draped in blankets, and he wordlessly offered Jesse a cushion, which he accepted with a level of grave solemnity that nearly sent him into giggles again. Maniacal, probably pretty hysterical giggles. He bit his lip, sat down, took a sip of tea to steady his nerves. “So...what happened?”

 

“That’s not what I --” Jesse regarded him steadily for a moment, dark eyes unreadable. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

 

“No.” Hanzo assured him calmly and took another sip of his tea, since that seemed to be imparting an amazing amount of courage to go along with the serenity. Perhaps it was the serenity of having no fucks left to give? He’d have to ask Ana.

 

“Okay, all right -- I guess that...wasn’t the sorta thing you can experience without deservin’ an explanation.” And now he finally took a gulp of his own tea. “It took a couple days to make it to the cabin -- Maritza didn’t know where it was, which was a saving grace, because the hunters she called up to help were mostly looking for me in the wrong places. I suspect she thought I’d go to town, try to find some way out from there, but I...didn’t really want to  _ leave. _ I just wanted someplace to hide.” A wry smile curled his mouth and reached his dark eyes. “And once I got there, I didn’t leave for weeks and weeks. Lived off the MREs and liquid nutrient stuff Yanaba and I carted up there that spring. Didn’t light up the wood burner unless it was so cold I couldn’t feel my fingers inside.”

 

“That sounds like the sort of fun that isn’t.” Hanzo wound his fingers together, the better to resist the urge to scoot closer and grab his hands, restlessly rolling the half-empty mug between his palms.

 

“I’ve had better campin’ trips.” Jesse’s tone was dry and the smile faded off his face. “I messaged Jack and Gabe to let them know the ranch wasn’t safe t’go back to and that I was hunkered down at the cabin. They contacted me back and we developed a check-in regimen, once every two days, and they were going to extract themselves from the mess they were presently in and come get me as soon as they could.” A soft chuckle that contained not a trace of humor. “But I was restless. Bored. Outta clean underwear. I hiked into town for a shopping trip and that’s where Marcus saw me. Saw me and chased me.”

 

_ And shot you in the back and tried to kill you. _ Hanzo held onto that with all his might and now he did slide close, close enough to touch if necessary. 

 

“I don’t remember a whole lot...after that.” He finished his tea in a single swallow and set the mug aside. “It was just after New Years when it happened. I woke up in the university hospital the best part of two years later.”

 

“Two...years?” Hanzo put his own cup down before the tremors in his hands sent it and the contents all over the floor. “How…?”

 

“Not sure. Probably won’t ever really be sure.” He looked away but couldn’t find anything he wanted to leave his gaze on and looked back. “Last thing I really remember is falling. Gabe and Jack came running when I stopped checking in and, per them, they found me chained up more dead than alive in the basement of some old artist colony out on the lip of Deadlock Gorge.”

 

Ice dripped the length of Hanzo’s spine and he couldn’t fight off the urge to shiver. “I...I think I remember seeing something about that. Somewhere.”

 

“Some nosy-ass reporter wrote a retrospective, got a lot of play awhile back.  _ Massacre In Deadlock Gorge _ .” This time the wry smile barely qualified for either designation. “Not really much of a massacre in the traditional sense of the term, since there weren’t any bodies just empty buildings where the students and staff shoulda been and me, in a room so hard-warded that Gabe couldn’t get past the door and filled with so much cold iron that Jack couldn’t open the the manacles, much less the bars of the cage. Fortunately, somebody’d called 911 when whatever happened started goin’ down and the EMTs had no such trouble --”

 

“A cage.” Hanzo said, in what he hoped was a calm, neutral, even tone. 

 

It apparently was not for Jesse froze in place, eyes wide and somewhat alarmed. “Uh. Yeah. I’m not sure --”

 

“ _ A cage. _ ” Hanzo reiterated as a pure, cold rage blossomed within him and that probably had something to do with the alarm spreading across Jesse’s face.

 

“Yeah -- a cage. Not sure I can blame them for that, either. They...well, somebody there seemed to know what they were dealing with --”

 

“ _ A fourteen year old. An injured fourteen year old. That is what they were dealing with, Jesse. _ ” It came out significantly louder than he intended, loud enough to echo off the walls and down the hall and ring in every corner. 

 

“An injured, unconscious  _ naayéé _ .” Jesse replied, actually calm and even, though his knuckles were white around the arms of the chair he sat in. “Whoever it was that found me, they knew -- knew how to bind me and keep me bound and how to keep others from stumbling over me by accident. Or at least that’s what Rein took from examining the ward structure, after the fact. They were --”

 

“ _ Protecting _ you? Protecting other people  _ from _ you?” Hanzo asked, voice tight, as that pure, cold rage began sprouting runners and trying to find its way past his ribcage. “I might accept that as an at least comprehensible explanation  _ for keeping you in a fucking cage. _ ”

 

“No.” Softly. “Nothin’ as reasonable as that. Best guess? They wanted me for my blood. For the power in it.”

 

Blood was starting to do dangerous, high-pressure things to the inside of Hanzo’s skull, as well, certain significant portions of his circulatory system, and his vision, which was washing red around the edges. He could not, thereafter, place the precise moment when he rose to his feet, his head and his heart both pounding with a fury so intense he could feel it filling his lungs with a heat brighter and fiercer than fire, could taste it on his tongue like lightning, his teeth aching in his jaw to lengthen into fangs, his fingers flexing as though claws slept inside them, both to rend whatever dared to do such things to his rescuer, his ranger, his  _ mate _ , whose hands were closed around his shoulders, holding tight, and whose voice, low and dark and frantic, was trying to fill his ears.

 

“Hanzo.  _ Hanzo. _ It’s okay -- it’s okay, it was a long time ago. Come back to me, darlin’.” A hand shifted from his shoulder to sink into his hair, to cradle the back of his skull, to make him meet the ranger’s dark eyes, catching and holding. “ _ Breathe. _ ”

 

That seemed a reasonable enough request, coming as it did from those lips, and so he obeyed it, breathed in deep, filled his lungs with his ranger’s scent, permitted it to soothe him, to ease the violence thrashing in his veins, to cool his fury. “I,” His voice sounded strange in his own ears, rough and dark, “think you are entirely too accepting of being  _ kept in a cage _ .”

 

“Like I said,” The ranger’s hands reached up to cradle his face, “It was a long time ago. Not much to do but get over it.”

 

“If you insist.” Hanzo took a second, deeper breath, Jesse’s scent filling his head like a living thing, sage and cedar and spice, warm skin and blood pulsing just beneath it. “I will be angry enough for both of us.”

 

“Okay.” His ranger took an unsteady breath of his own. “Can we talk about that other thing now?”

 

“ _ Certainly. _ ” Hanzo replied and his hands found their solid, meant-to-rest-there places on Jesse’s hips again.

 

“Okay.” Jesse said, again, and breathed a little more, dark eyes darting around as though they wanted to rest anywhere but his face and kept being dragged back, very much against their will. The warm, callused hands drifted down his neck to rest on his shoulders and, surrendering to the inevitable, he allowed their gazes to come back into contact. “I’m...not sure where to start.”

 

“Do you want me to…?” Hanzo half-asked, his mouth trying hard to go dry.

 

“No. No, I --” The corners of his ranger’s mouth were fighting a mighty struggle with some complicated tangle of emotions, battered up and down by repeated internal blows. “I should be sayin’ a lot of different things to put you off right now. I shouldn’t be encouraging this at all. The bond between us -- it’s messin’ with your head, with your emotions, compromisin’ your judgment and mine and --”

 

“Of course it is,” Hanzo breathed, comfortingly. “How could it not? Our souls are tied together.”

 

“Yes. Right. You understand. I’m glad --” Jesse sounded almost relieved.

 

“Yes, I  _ do _ understand. I understand how  _ lonely _ you are -- how lonely you’ve been for  _ years _ \-- how much you need someone in your life who can see you for everything you are and not turn away.” Hanzo replied and leaned closer. “Am I wrong?”

 

Jesse was silent for a long moment, the look in his eyes wild with barely repressed emotion, holding the corners of his mouth flat and steady with desperate effort. “No...no, you’re not. And you’ve been lonely, too, but darlin’ you’re -- you’ve got a thousand years of history behind you and I’m nobody from nowhere. This is  _ all _ I’ve got to offer you and this job, the work I do, ain’t ever going to anything but freaky and dangerous and you deserve  _ better _ than this.” Softly. “You’ve already given so much, darlin’. I just want you to be safe and happy.”

 

“I would give all of those years for this and you.” Hanzo erased the last of the physical distance between them, Jesse’s hands sliding down to rest on his back, fingers spread wide. “And you are  _ not _ ‘nobody.’ You’re an actual fucking  _ hero _ , Jesse McCree, and you should at least  _ try _ to remember it.”

 

“We’ve only known each other for nine days.” Jesse leaned in, pressed their foreheads together, closed his eyes.

 

“During which you’ve saved my soul and my life a minimum of three times. That’s like an average of once every two and a half days. In some places, that implies a strong personal interest verging on commitment.” Hanzo whispered. “Look at me.”

 

Jesse sighed against his lips and opened his eyes. “I think I’m fallin’ in love with you, too.”

 

“Good. Because I’d hate to be alone in that.” His heart and his stomach, in rare accord, both fluttered simultaneously and then settled down because nothing good could come of nervous horking in the aftermath of such a confession. “Kiss me?”

 

“ _ Gods _ , yes.”

 

It was not a chaste kiss. Nor was it only one. Jesse, for someone who lived alone in a cabin on the left asscheek of nowhere and whom had had, by his own admission, no serious relationships of a romantic nature possessed surprisingly well-developed out-making skills. Skills that caused all of the blood in Hanzo’s head and at least sixty percent of the rest of his body to rush urgently southward, so hard it made him a little lightheaded. Or that might have been oxygen deprivation combined with the taste of Jesse’s mouth. Or possibly the sensation of Jesse’s knee sliding between his thighs as they backed toward the world’s most comfortable couch. It most definitely had something to do with Jesse’s hands sliding under his tee-shirt and stroking hungrily over his belly, his sides, his back. Horizontality on some preferably soft surface was rapidly becoming necessary, before his ability to think coherent thoughts disappeared entirely into a lust-colored haze and extensive moaning of endearments in at least three languages.

 

At the very instant his back hit the world’s most comfortable couch cushions and Jesse’s warm, cedar-spice-sage scented weight settled atop him, between his thighs, the  _ incoming message _ tone sounded on his tablet and he found himself, contrary to sanity, contrary to the numerous urgent demands of his body for  _ more of this right now all the more of this _ , he lifted his head and gasped out, “Wait.”

 

“Wait?” Jesse asked, looking up from the task of applying an unmistakable for anything but it was love bite to his clavicle.

 

“ _ Wait. _ ” Hanzo pleaded. “Just one second. This might be the information I was waiting for from home. If it is, we can celebrate.”

 

“Okay. Okay. I can wait. This is important.” Jesse agreed and sat up enough to allow Hanzo to wriggle an arm free and swipe his tablet off the coffee table and thumb the screen open.

 

It took him a moment to fully process what he was looking at once he did finally get his email open, distracted by Jesse pressing a series of warm, faintly wet kisses around his belly button. Then he began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh until Jesse, alarmed by the edges his laughter was growing, sat up and took him in his arms and asked, softly and urgently, “What is it, darlin’? What’s wrong?”

 

“Well,” Hanzo said, from around the painful, spiky obstruction in his throat, “I believe I can say with some certainty that I am no longer burdened by a thousand years of family history.”

 

*

 

Genji noticed it the instant they walked onto the hacienda’s veranda, because of course he did. Genji, semi-notorious for the extent and breadth of his conquests among the entire younger generation of the Shimada Clan, had a genuinely diabolical sixth sense when it came to anything involving aggressive cuddling, boffing, boinking, shagging, outright fornicating, or even the mildest of carnal knowledge as it applied to his person. It was awful, it had  _ always been _ awful, he could not imagine it ever becoming less awful, especially when his little brother’s eyes zeroed in on the fingernail-sized sliver of suction-purpled skin poking just slightly above the collar of his shirt and rested there, searing through his chest and out his back to spear Jesse, coming through the doorway behind him. Jesse politely ignored the dragony death staring at him and smiled a general greeting.

 

“Well,” His terrible, awful little brother drawled, eyes glittering green-gold-dangerous, “look who finally crawled out of bed.”

 

Hana, seated across from him at the trestle table still littered with evidence of breakfast just past, looked at him over the top of her tablet. “We did  _ not _ save you any bacon because you two are slacking slackers who have slacked until it’s almost noon.”

 

“Don’t listen to her,” Zen’s voice floated out the kitchen window. “We just made more. Fresh coffee and tea will also be available momentarily.”

 

“Thank you kindly, Doc.” Jesse pulled out his chair for him and, in the instant, the air turned electric with the unspoken communications flying back and forth between his glorious asshole brother and his wholly committed enabler almost-sister.

 

Hanzo, for his part, dug his own tablet out of his bag and asked, desperately reaching for casual, “Genji, have you logged into the family network recently?”

 

Genji tore himself away from the increasingly serious sequence of glares, stares, and meaningful eyebrow twitches he was exchanging with Hana and blinked quizzically at him for a moment. “Like...maybe two weeks ago? I turned in a tech assessment for hardware R&D. Why?”

 

“Could you try right now?” 

 

Zenyatta materialized at his elbow and slid a mug of perfectly brewed kukicha and a plate of perfectly rolled tamagoyaki, sliced melon, and enough fresh, hot bacon to satisfy his deepest carnivorous urges, had such urges not been bound up in the mass of knots currently occupying his entire digestive tract.. He smiled his thanks and Zen paused, rested a gentle hand on his shoulder in passing as he took up his own seat. Lucio joined them a moment later, depositing a similarly laden plate in front of Jesse and a fresh carafe of coffee for the table in general. Both of them observed the silent communion going on between Genji and Hana and began adding their own unspoken quips and questions and Hanzo officially had no idea what any of them were saying but he was fairly sure it had something to do with the acquisition of more condoms. He managed, just barely, to swallow the urge to indulge in another bout of hysterical laughter. Under the table, Jesse’s hand found his own.

 

“...Okay.” Genji shot him a sidelong look made of equal parts suspicion and concern and retrieved his tablet. “Yeah, I’m in. Why?”

 

Hanzo took a moment to briefly mourn the delicious breakfast he would not be able to consume and slid his own tablet across the table. Genji’s quizzical look grew, briefly, even more quizzical and then he read the substance of the email sitting open on the screen:  _ Pursuant to the request of the Shimada-gumi clan council, your access credentials to the secure network have been suspended indefinitely and your queries cancelled. --Toshokan-in, Network Administrator. _

 

“ _ Motherfucker. _ ” Genji breathed and reached for his phone.

 

“Hey, language! There’s a lady present!” Hana sat up, snatched the tablet out of Genji’s hand before anyone could think to stop her. “ _ Son of a bitch. _ ”

 

“Genji, please.” Hanzo reached out and caught his brother’s hand. “It’s three o’clock in the morning in --”

 

“Did Mom call  you about this?” Genji asked tightly. “Did Dad? Did  _ anybody _ think you deserved even the slightest head’s up or did they just let this drop without comment?”

 

The knots already occupying the majority of Hanzo’s thoracic cavity abruptly doubled in size and relative density. “No. But --”

 

“ _ There is no fucking but. _ For the love of the dragons, Hanzo!” Genji let him wrestle his hand back down to the table. “You can’t let them  _ do _ this to you.”

 

“What’s  _ this _ ?” Hot Vampire Jack asked as he stepped out onto the veranda, Chad and Binky at his heels. 

 

“An excellent question.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe added and Hanzo had to physically resist the urge to jump shrieking across the table because he did so from the previously unoccupied rocking chair two arms-lengths from his back.

 

“The clan council locked Hanzo out of our family’s private network.” Genji replied, before Hanzo could work his heart back out of his throat. “Historically speaking, this is the first step taken in the unpleasant road that leads to formal disinheritance.”

 

“That is not --” Hanzo began.

 

“Cousins Hideki, Masuhiro, and Chiyo, Aunts Shizu and Atsuko, and Great-Uncle Eichiro.” Genji ran him over ruthlessly. “First. Fucking. Step. Hanzo. And they didn’t even  _ warn _ you.” He paused, eyes glittering wildly, visibly fought for control. “I’ve given up on Mom but I sort of thought better of our father.”

“Is that true, kid?” Hot Vampire Jack asked, settling in his own rocking chair, unfocused gaze coming to rest with unnerving accuracy on his face.

 

“Broadly, yes.” Hanzo managed to force the words past the knots rapidly proliferating into his throat. “I was honestly rather surprised to discover I hadn’t already been locked out. It may have been an oversight that I drew attention to with my query. I suppose we’ll find out for certain at the beginning of next month.”

 

“Genji,” Lucio asked quietly, pulling over his own messenger bag, “can I see your tablet for a minute?”

 

“Certainly.” It slid across the table. “Or we could call Mom right now and demand a fucking explanation. Or later if you’re going to insist on being considerate.”

 

“What happens at the beginning of next month?” Terrifying Smoke Gabe asked, needles clicking. 

 

“The deposit of my monthly stipend.” Hanzo replied, dryly. “My trust is overseen by a conservator appointed by the clan. If the wheels are actually turning on my disinheritance -- and they might be, I’ve suspected for awhile that they may be waiting for me to graduate to pull the trigger -- something may happen then.”

 

The clicking of needles stopped at his back. “You have the worst fucking family on Earth, I hope you realize that.”

 

“Which is why I feel strongly that waking our parents up at three in the morning is really not that terrible of a thing in the cosmic scheme of things.” Genji added, wagging his phone suggestively. 

 

Hanzo took a deep, cleansing breath, resisted the urge to scream or cry and replied, tightly, “Genji, I  _ cannot fucking deal _ with our terrible fucking family right now, okay? I just can’t. I can’t even look at them much less talk to them. I’ll get a fucking job to help make rent. I’ll --”

 

“Well, actually -- that’s something Jack and I wanted to talk to you lot about.” The needles were clicking again. “Your condo’s not safe to go back to and won’t be for awhile yet. We’ve got plenty of space here. Consequently, we suggest you move in with us at least until this situation is sorted.”

 

“You’ll definitely be safer here.” Jack added serenely in the face of Hanzo’s silence, which was not so much shocked as made up of an inexpressible welter of emotions exerting a crushing grip on Jesse’s hand.

 

“Easy there, darlin’, I’m going to need that for work.” Jesse murmured, not quite for his ears only. 

 

Hanzo relaxed his grip a fraction and peace-stress breathed until the insides of his skull stopped vibrating, his heart stopped bouncing merrily on the knots in his stomach, and the knots at least provisionally unknotted themselves and settled into a state of mild dyspepsia. “I know what I would say but --”

 

“Just so you know,” Hana added, “the rest of us have already said ‘yes.’ Because we showed up on time for breakfast. Which you should eat before it gets cold.”

 

“Yes, Hana.” He replied and obediently forked up a mouthful of tamagoyaki, which was exactly as good as he expected it to be. “We’re unanimous then.”

 

“Yes, we are.” Genji admitted, ungrudgingly, and put his phone away. “Are you okay,  _ aniki _ ?”

 

“No.” Hanzo replied honestly. “But I will be. Eventually.”

 

“Hopefully sooner rather than later.” Lucio said from behind the obstruction of his holo-rig. “Mr. Morrison --”

 

“You can call me Jack, kid. Same goes for the rest of you.” Hot Vampire Jack interjected and Hanzo was really going to have to stop thinking of him that way before it inevitably fell out of his mouth.

 

“...No. No I totally cannot.” Lucio replied. “D’you have like, fourteen terabytes of open space anywhere in your household system that I could borrow?”

 

At Hanzo’s back, the needles stopped clicking and Hot Vampire Jack’s eyes narrowed, a small, sharp grin formed on his lips, and he extracted a tablet from the saddlebag hanging on arm of his chair. “Why, yes. Yes, we do. Check your notifications.”

 

“Thank you  _ kindly _ , Mr. Morrison.” Lucio sang and went back to work.

 

“So,” The needles began working again, as well. “Now that that’s decided, what’s the next thing we need to deal with?”

 

“We’re going to have to find some other way to research the Shimada warrior.” Hanzo said from around an unpardonably large mouthful of bacon as his stomach, now realizing its unknotted state, demanded to be filled immediately.

 

“Who, I think it’s safe to presume, is probably no longer among the living?” Terrifying Smoke Gabe asked, mildly.

 

Hanzo swallowed his mouthful in three stages and replied, “The type of arrowheads I saw were in common use from the late fifteen hundreds to the late eighteen hundreds so unless she found the fountain of youth somewhere…”

 

“Safe bet, then.” Serenely. “Well. Talking to dead people is but one of the services we offer at this fine establishment, if push comes to shove. But I think that might not be necessary.”

 

“No. No it will not. Thanks for the tablet, G.” Lucio shut his rig down and handed the tablet back across the table. “I downloaded the contents of the Shimada-gumi genealogical database and historical information archives to local storage.  _ You’re welcome. _ ”

 

Silence broken only by the sound of Binky stealing the bacon out of Hanzo’s stunned fingers and chewing it contemplatively reigned for several moments thereafter.

 

“How --” Hanzo began, stopped, considered, continued on, “The internal defenses of the archive shouldn’t have allowed you to --”

 

“You are  _ not _ the only person sitting at this table with hidden depths.” Lucio replied, grinning wryly. “Suffice it to say, in my misspent youth --”

 

“You are  _ twenty-three _ years old.”

 

“ _ In my misspent youth _ , I cultivated certain antisocial skills that I employed to embarrass local politicians back home that continue to provide dividends even now.” Lucio leveled a look at him. “Seriously, man. Screw your family. You and Genji both deserve better. We’ll find out what went down back when and we’ll make what’s going on now right. And if we get to punch a dragon in the face as part of the process? So much the better.”


End file.
